• Thousands of Fortnite accounts are getting sold daily in a market for stolen video game accounts that generates $1 billion annually, according to security researchers. 
• Hackers take advantage of tools that allow them to see if login credentials from past data breaches allow them access to Fortnite accounts.
• These accounts on average sell between $200 to $250 each — with some even selling for thousands, according to the researchers.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The black market for stolen video game logins is a big business, and it's come for Fortnite in a big way.

Thousands of Fortnite accounts are getting sold on a daily basis in a black market for stolen video game accounts that collectively brings in $1 billion on an annual basis, according to a report published by Night Lion Security titled "The Fortnite Underground Cybercrime Economy."

Hackers take advantage of cracking tools that allows them to reach an average of nearly 500 accounts per second. The report said that the tools can see whether the accounts can be unlocked with credentials that show up from past data breaches that are unrelated to Fortnite.

Different Fortnite accounts have valuable skins that can alter a player's avatar. These accounts on average sell between $200 to $250 each, Vinny Troia, Founder, Chief Security Research and Strategy at Night Lion Security, told Bloomberg News. Some can go for thousands.

"Epic Games takes a sophisticated layered approach to protect our players," a spokesperson told Business Insider on Friday. "We use technology like captcha, IP reputation, machine learning, and proprietary technology to detect threats in seconds, proactively block login attempts and automatically take action to secure any compromised accounts we identify."

The spokesperson also confirmed to Business Insider that buying and selling Fortnite accounts is against the game's Terms of Service, and the company seeks to return any recovered stolen accounts to the owner.

"The market for stolen account sales is much larger than just the gaming industry," the report said. "From our research, the black market for the buying and selling of stolen Fortnite accounts is among the most expansive, and also the most lucrative."

The popularity of Fortnite has grown exponentially since it debuted in 2017. In the game, 100 players fight against each other other on an ever-shrinking map to be the last player standing.

The game now has over 350 million registered players and is distributed as three different game modes on a variety of gaming platforms, such as PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch.

People whose Fortnite accounts might have been stolen should follow the instructions on Epic's website, the spokesperson said. They can also follow details online on how to best protect their accounts.

• The US Justice Department shut down an ISIS-affiliated scam that attempted to sell fake personal protective equipment (PPE) through a website and Facebook accounts.
• When a US-based customer contacted the website to purchase masks for first-responders, a Syrian national living in Turkey responded by saying he could easily provide up to 100,000 N95 masks.
• Based on the website, the masks were manufactured in Turkey and none were certified by US agencies.
• Researchers say the scam is another way terror groups are taking advantage of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The US Justice Department shut down an ISIS-affiliated scam that attempted sell fake personal protective equipment (PPE) through a website and Facebook accounts, which researchers say is another novel way terrorists are taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic.

FaceMaskCenter.com, a now-defunct website that claimed to sell FDA-approved N95 respirator masks and other sought-after PPE, contained all the hallmarks of a legitimate online store — including accepting credit cards. The website claimed it was "the original online personal protective equipment supplier and was the first of its kind" since its inception in 1996, when in fact the site was created February 26, 2020.

The website was seized by the Justice Department and visitors are now greeted with an official disclaimer and a phone number to call if they were victims of the scam.

It was not immediately clear if anyone purchased PPE from the website; however, when a US-based customer contacted the website to purchase masks for first-responders, a Syrian national living in Turkey responded by saying he could "easily provide up to 100,000 N95 masks, which he claimed to have in his possession," according to the Justice Department's complaint.

A review of the face masks that were purportedly for sale indicates that the PPE was manufactured in Turkey, and were not certified by US agencies like the Food and Drug Administration.

The complaint specifically names Murat Cakar, a Turkey-based man classified as an "ISIS facilitator."

Cakar, which researchers say could be another alias, is accused of managing the scheme and accepting $100,000 from Zoobia Shahnaz, an American who pleaded guilty in 2018 to financially supporting ISIS and attempting to travel to Syria to join the terrorist organization. Cakar, according to a "confidential reliable source" of the Justice Department, was also instrumental in ISIS hacking operations.

Researchers who have studied the terrorist organizations say that while online scams are not a novel concept for ISIS affiliates, their approach in taking advantage of the PPE demand is unique.

Chelsea Daymon, an associate fellow with the Global Network on Extremism & Technology and a researcher at American University, first noticed ISIS sympathizers mentioning the coronavirus in their social media channels in mid-January.

"This was sort of a new turn because historically, since the pandemic started, we saw ISIS use COVID-19 for more propaganda purposes — spreading things that have to do with their ideology or demonizing individuals that are perceived as their enemy," Daymon said.

"So we've seen more narrative and propaganda use of the virus, and as the virus continued on, we've seen ISIS use the virus to it's advantage on the ground in Syria and Iraq ... where in the last number of months there has been an increase in the number of attacks while governments are having their attention elsewhere," Daymon added.

ISIS affiliates have used the COVID-19 pandemic as a messaging tool and incorporated it into their propaganda communications on social media apps like Telegram, Rocket.chat, and Twitter.

Several of these themes included graphs and charts of the number of deaths related to the coronavirus, seemingly in celebration of the death tolls. ISIS sympathizers also claimed the coronavirus was intentionally created in a lab and spread by non-believers.

Some of their narratives also echoed the baseless conspiracy theories spread by US-based far-right groups — that any future coronavirus vaccine would cause autism, was a government ploy, or a corporate campaign for profit. According to Daymon's research, some of the sympathizers also claimed that a potential vaccination would be a Western plot to kill Muslims.

Hundreds of coronavirus-related messages compiled from these messaging platforms revealed that roughly a quarter of them were related to death toll updates; 16% were related to divine punishment of non-believers; and 11% were related to humor and conspiracy theories.

It is unclear if there are other ISIS-linked websites that are taking advantage of the pandemic. But Daymon notes that the group, like other terrorist organizations, will take advantage of world events for their nefarious purposes.

"It's not a surprise because I think any extremist group will use to their benefit any opportunity," Daymon said. "And the pandemic has been actually pretty good for that for many groups across many spectrums, because it really falls into different narratives and ideologies: this idea that, 'society is collapsing, therefore you want to be on the right side of history.'"

• Then-candidate Donald Trump promised supporters in 2016 that he would "make America safe again" by cracking down on crime, which had reached historic lows at the time.
• Four years later, Trump and the Republican party have embraced a "law and order" message, and declared Americans won't be safe under a Democratic administration, as their ticket to reelection. 
• Republican political strategists hope fears about violent crime will eclipse concern about Covid-19, the economic crisis it threw the country in and the Trump administration's deeply flawed pandemic response.
• Polling hasn't shown that Trump has an edge on "law and order" issues or that Joe Biden will be hurt by Trump's messaging. 
• "If Donald Trump is premising his entire reelection on winning the fifth most important issue ... that seems less like a genius strategy and more like a Hail Mary," a Democratic strategist said. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

"Our Convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation," Donald Trump told a boisterous crowd of supporters. "I have a message for all of you: the crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end. Beginning on January 20th 2017, safety will be restored." 

Four years after Trump promised at the 2016 Republican convention that he'd "make America safe again," he's seizing on a virtually identical message while serving as president amid widespread protests over police brutality towards Black Americans.

Even as 1,000 Americans continue to die from Covid-19 every day, tens of millions remain unemployed, and wildfires and hurricanes wreak havoc across the country, the GOP convention this week was dominated by urgent warnings that Americans won't be safe under Biden's leadership. 

"No one will be safe in Biden's America," Trump declared from the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday night. 

Biden, who's come under fire for his role in crafting the 1994 crime bill that exacerbated mass incarceration, has supported the peaceful protests against police mistreatment of Black people and repeatedly denounced looting and rioting.

'Chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence'

The Republican party spent the last four days railing against violence in American cities, which has marred peaceful mass demonstrations against racism and police brutality ever since George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis in May. Meanwhile, other forms of crime, including homicides, have spiked since the pandemic hit.

No matter that the "chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence," as Trump aide Kellyanne Conway put it, has broken out on Trump's watch. The GOP blamed Democratic mayors and governors, and promoted a St. Louis couple who brandished weapons at protesters, while conservative activists praised a 17-year-old accused of murdering two protesters in Wisconsin.  

Vice President Mike Pence put it bluntly during his address on Wednesday night: "You won't be safe in Joe Biden's America." Conway argued that violence in America's streets will boost Trump's reelection chances. 

"From Seattle and Portland to Washington and New York, Democrat-run cities across this country are being overrun by violent mobs. The violence is rampant," South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said during her RNC address on Wednesday. "There's looting, chaos, destruction and murder. People that can afford to flee have fled. But the people that can't — good, hard-working Americans — are left to fend for themselves."

Donald Trump Jr. told a story of good versus evil: "This election is shaping up to be church, work, and school versus rioting, looting, and vandalism." 

The president hammered home the same message in his 70-minute closing speech on Thursday night, falsely claiming that Biden plans to defund the police. 

"The most dangerous aspect of the Biden platform is the attack on public safety," he said. 

Trump boasted of his own criminal justice reform legislation and then slammed Democrats for supporting policies aimed at ending mass incarceration, warning they would release hundreds of thousands of criminals "onto the streets and into your neighborhoods." 

Meanwhile, the crowd of 1,500 supporters seated inches apart on the South Lawn were nearly all maskless. The virus' death toll and the ongoing danger it poses went unmentioned. 

Republicans are doing their best to conflate peaceful protests against police violence with the riots. Most famously, the president had peaceful demonstrators tear gassed outside of the White House so he could stage a photo op outside a nearby church in June. 

While Biden has repeatedly condemned looting and rioting, many Democrats have been reluctant to focus too much attention on the rioters. They fear drawing an equivalence between police brutality and the response to it.

"Burning down communities is not protest," Biden said in a video this week. "It's needless violence."

Black Lives Matter activists and others on the left have called to defund the police, but Biden has rejected the approach and instead proposed boosting funding for social workers to work alongside law enforcement and other community policing efforts. He's also called for a federal ban on chokeholds and a national use of force standard. 

Trump's 'Hail Mary' 

Recent polling shows that crime is an important issue for Americans, particularly for Republicans. A Pew survey in mid-August found that violent crime was the fifth most important issue for all voters — 59% called it "very important." By comparison, 63% of voters said the same of the coronavirus, which has killed 180,000 in the US, infected 6 million, and thrown the country into an economic crisis. 

The economy, healthcare, and Supreme Court nominations were the top three issues for registered voters when deciding who support this fall.

But polling hasn't shown that a recent decline in support for the Black Lives Matter movement will hurt Biden, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis. It's not clear that GOP messaging on crime will hit Biden in the way the party hopes. 

While Republicans have historically campaigned on "law and order" messaging, a late July poll from The Washington Post and ABC News showed Biden with a nine-point lead over Trump on "crime and safety" issues. 

Republican political strategists hope fears about violent crime will eclipse concern about Covid-19 and the Trump administration's deeply flawed pandemic response.

"Fear is a real motivator in politics. In March and April people were afraid of coronavirus — that fear is dissipating," Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist, told Business Insider. "The fear about coronavirus is now becoming fear about safety in cities and suburbs and neighborhoods." 

Conservatives say violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin following Jacob Blake's shooting by police on Sunday could help spread fear that crime will spread to cities across the heartland. 

"Kenosha, to me, feels like a tipping point because it's one thing when it's a large urban area — Portland, Seattle, Chicago, New York — most of middle America has never been to those places," Mackowiak said. "To go from a quiet, suburban, medium-sized town to chaos in 48 hours, I think that wakes a lot of people up."

But Democratic strategists hope voters will blame the uptick in crime on the current president. They say Trump's positioning as an antidote to chaos isn't credible. 

"When people see chaos, they don't see Donald Trump as the answer to it," Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist who served as a spokesman for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, told Insider. "He's led a country into chronic chaos for three and a half years." 

Democrats and others point out that fear-mongering about crime didn't work for Trump last cycle. Leading up to the 2018 midterm elections, Trump railed against illegal immigration and misleadingly claimed a caravan of migrants, including criminals and members of ISIS, was preparing to invade the country. 

Republicans lost their House majority and Trump stopped talking about caravans and border invasions.

"If Donald Trump is premising his entire reelection on winning the fifth most important issue, when it's an issue that he's at best tied with us on, that seems less like a genius strategy and more like a Hail Mary," Ferguson said. 

• Infrastructure — like roads, bridges, and energy grids — is the most foundational backbone of our country's economy.
• As cities recover from the economic devastation of COVID-19, now is the time for the federal government to help local governments rebuild key infrastructure.
• This aid will give cities like Noblesville, Indiana, a chance to bounce back from the pandemic and grow into the future.
• Chris Jensen is in his first term as mayor of his hometown of Noblesville.
• This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Infrastructure is the physical backbone of our country – but too often this discussion in Washington, DC is confined to our interstate highways and bridges. Leaders of local cities and towns across our country know that when it comes to infrastructure, the quintessential Main Street is starting to crumble.

With local governments experiencing significant financial impact from COVID-19, now is the time for our partners at the federal level to act in a way that will facilitate both short-term recovery and long-term growth.

Help to bounce back from the pandemic

Noblesville, Indiana is not unlike many cities or towns across our country. We work with our local, county, state – and yes, national — partners to do more with less, working to maintain and upgrade our roads, bridges, energy and utility systems, and communications networks. We have learned to get creative to deliver results for our constituents, after all, as the foundational level of government, we are most accountable to them every day.

Especially in these times, the primary challenge to building and maintaining a strong and healthy local infrastructure has been, and continues to be, the availability of funding.

As the federal government considers support for state and local governments, they should reject the urge to offer short-term relief and simply issue bail out checks to cities and towns. Instead, it should invest in them. With federal bonds needed to finance projects at record-low interest rates and infrastructure investment having broad bipartisan support, now is the ideal time for our federal partners to fund infrastructure dollars to the local level and invest in long-term assets. 

With necessary accountability safeguards, federal road funding grants will unleash local governments and give them the flexibility to direct the dollars in ways that provide maximum benefit. They will also give local constituents more input at the level of government that is closest to the people and is best aligned to pursue current and future priorities.

Help economies grow into the future

As we experience increased unemployment rates, infrastructure investment acts as a force multiplier, creating jobs now, making communities safer and healthier, and building a foundation for economic growth for generations to come.

Funding these projects – especially ones that impact more than just a city or town, but a whole region – can serve as a catalyst for recovery for communities trying to navigate through this global pandemic. The City of Noblesville has identified several infrastructure projects that would have substantial local and regional impact in pursuit of these recovery goals.

Infrastructure investment is a critical need that is universally shared among cities and towns across the country – in red states and blue states. Mayors and constituents appreciate the steps Congress took to fund vital investments in public health, personal protective equipment, and other pandemic mitigation and response needs.

Now is the time to move forward and reinvest in the backbone of America. Local road funding grants can help fill in the revenue gaps and ultimately jump start our workforce and get Americans back to work.

Chris Jensen is in his first term as mayor of his hometown of Noblesville. Previously, he served on the Noblesville Common Council and worked in the administration of former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels.

• The charter companies, aircraft management firms, and ground operations and maintenance companies that comprise the private jet industry have recovered more thoroughly and swiftly than commercial airlines. 
• Some of these companies accessed funds from two or even three buckets of federal aid. 
• The industry is made up of about 1,900 companies and employs about 1.2 million people. Yet out of the $2 trillion CARES act, it scooped up a disproportionate $666 million.
• Thirty-six private jet companies have received $7,538,300 in Economic Injury Disaster Loans from the Small Business Administration and at least 95 private jet firms got Paycheck Protection Program loans, totaling between $64.3 million and $149.9 million.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The impact of an ongoing pandemic best fought by a population of shut-ins has devastated the travel industry: Airlines are hunkering down for a years-long recovery. Planemakers have slashed production plans. Cruise companies are all but shuttered, and hotels are doing everything they can to attract guests. 

One pocket of the travel business, though, has handled the turbulence surprisingly well: the private jet industry. 

The charter companies, fractional ownership organizations, aircraft management firms, and ground operations and maintenance companies that cater to elite air travelers have been hit less severely, and have recovered more thoroughly and swiftly, than commercial airlines. 

That's partly because private aviation was able to successfully market itself as a safer way to travel, essentially allowing well-heeled access to vacation homes and quarantine hideaways without the risks associated with commercial air travel. 

But during the spring months when the pain was real, when even the rich and famous stayed terrestrial, the industry enjoyed unusually helpful government largesse. By virtue of their hybrid nature — they're both airlines and small businesses — some of these companies accessed funds from two or even three buckets of federal aid. 

And while more than 100,000 small businesses failed for a lack of aid and major airlines are already begging for a fresh round of relief. The private aviation industry is made up of about 1,900 companies — including everything from charter services with dozens of jets to sightseeing operations with just a single propeller plane — which employs about 1.2 million people, yet out of the $2 trillion CARES act, it scooped up a disproportionate $666 million.

"The Trump administration's priorities are hurting those who need help the most and helping the already wealthy and well-connected," said Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US, a watchdog group that produced a report on how private jet operators have received federal aid. "They have abandoned struggling small businesses and slashed aid for workers while allowing the booming private jet industry — including many Trump donors — to triple-dip in taxpayer money."

CARES Act funding hasn't done enough to support small businesses — or, some would argue, major airlines.

When Congress passed the CARES Act in late March, it included $58 billion for airlines, half under a Payroll Support Program (PSP) and half as low-interest operational loans. A separate bit of the law made small businesses eligible for fully forgivable loans of up to $10 million through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), as well as facilitated loans of up to $2 million through the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program. 

Even though airlines like American have received as much as $5.8 billion in PSP aid, it has not been enough to cover their entire payroll, leading airlines to encourage workers to take unpaid leaves and early retirements, according to Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants. Now, as restrictions on furloughs and layoffs expire, airlines are preparing to layoff tens of thousands of workers.

"Did the Payroll Support Program save jobs and keep people on payroll? Yes. So on balance, the program worked," Nelson told Business Insider. "I don't mean to say it worked perfectly, but it saved jobs."

"It was never funded to cover more than six months," Nelson added. "At the time, everyone hoped we'd be in a different place by now. We're not, so there needs to be an extension. A lot can change in six more months."

Meanwhile, the two programs set up to help small businesses were quickly overwhelmed by applications, and exhausted their funds within two weeks. By May 11, about 100,000 small businesses had collapsed, according to a study by researchers at University of Illinois, Harvard Business School, Harvard University and the University of Chicago.

A bunch of companies that were considered 'airlines' also landed small business grants and loans.

Although the Payroll Support Program seems written with large passenger airlines and cargo operators in mind, some 320 smaller carriers and private aviation firms have received about $935 million of the total $25 billion allocated, according to Treasury numbers. (The vast majority went to the 15 biggest commercial airlines.) 

Some of those were companies like Beryl Air, an Alaskan sightseeing company which operates a single float plane and received just $2,149 in PSP funds. More than half were private jet charter companies, which together received $508,645,759 in payroll support. That makes sense: Many of these companies employ just a few dozen people and, despite their wealthy clientele, operate on thin margins.

But that's not all they got. Because many smaller private jet companies also fit the standard definition of a small business, they were eligible to receive funds under the programs meant for places like restaurants and hardware stores. 

Thirty-six private jet companies have received $7,538,300 in Economic Injury Disaster Loans from the Small Business Administration. At least 95 private jet firms got Paycheck Protection Program loans, totaling between $64.3 million and $149.9 million (loan recipients were approved for minimum and maximum loan amounts; the Small Business Administration has not disclosed specific amounts.) Each of those companies also received grants through the airline-focused Payroll Support Program, according to data compiled by Accountable.US.

Between these three programs, 170 private jet firms received about $666 million, according to Accountable.US. Those firms also benefited from federal excise and fuel tax waivers as part of the relief bill.

Delaware-based Dumont Aviation Group, for example, received nearly $2 million in PSP grants, up to $5 million in forgivable PPP loans, and $500,000 in EIDL loans, for a total of nearly $7.5 million. (Dumont did not respond to a request for comment.)

"Only the Trump administration would find three separate ways to bail out high flying private jet companies while 25% of Americans face food insecurity and unemployment tops 10%," said Kyle Herrig, the Accountable.US president. 

"This is an industry that can charge clients $25,000 or more for a single flight – this government aid should've gone to support truly small businesses and the communities they serve."

The reality is more complicated for small private aviation firms.

Scorn on the private jet industry is easy to understand, especially as small businesses collapse, unemployment assistance slows, and record numbers of Americans remain jobless. Before the CARES Act was passed, Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic Policy, told CNBC, "Putting up public money to support an industry that serves the rich would be hard to justify. It's absurd."

But private aviation connotes more than extravagance.

While the rich and famous make up some of the industry's clientele — especially for leisure travel — a large share of private aviation business comes from more restrained businesses using it to access hard-to-reach or far-flung sites.

Classic examples include a regional manager for an automaker visiting several car dealerships across a few states, or manufacturing plants spread out across a region. Of the nearly 5,000 public airports in the US, only about 500 serve commercial flights. Where a work trip could take a week flying between commercial airports, renting cars, and driving out to destinations, it could only take a day or two using a chartered plane.

Nearly 2,000 private aircraft operators are certified by the FAA to charter flights, ranging from major charter operations like Jet Linx and fractional owner companies like NetJets, to helicopter couriers and sightseeing companies, to outfits with a single propeller plane taxiing passengers between remote rural areas and airports frequented by small regional airlines. The private aviation industry creates 1.2 million jobs and generates $77 billion in income, according to industry lobbyists.

The majority of these companies have just a few dozen employees, most of them specialized and certified as pilots, flight attendants, maintenance technicians, dispatchers, and the like. Although passengers pay a lot for flights, private aviation firms often operate with relatively slim margins thanks to fixed capital and operational expenses.

And the pandemic didn't leave them be. 

"In April we did see a 75 percent drop in business," Nick Tarascio, CEO of New York-based Ventura Air Services — one of the companies that received funds through all three available programs — said in an email to Business Insider. "This was not for us alone, this was the experience across the private aviation sector."

As business slowed in April and initial PPP funds were delayed, Ventura furloughed 10 of its 45 employees. Once PPP and PSP funding came in, Tarascio said, the company rehired all of them.

Meg Bianco, president of an Ohio-based company that also received funds through all three programs, said that her 165-employee company likely would have collapsed without the emergency funding. (Bianco spoke with Business Insider on the condition that her company's name not be printed in the context of discussing business troubles.) The company's maintenance, repair, and operational services work dropped by 40%. Business for its ground operations unit plunged as much as 90%.

"We would have had to shut down our ground operations division without the help," Bianco said of the Payroll Support Program and SBA loans. "Margins were so slim, we wouldn't have had a choice." 

The outlook for private aviation is growing even stronger. Commercial airlines and small businesses, however, are preparing for a difficult few years.

Six months into the pandemic's seizure of the United States, the outlook for the commercial aviation sector remains bleak. Analysts don't expect demand to fully recover until 2024. Small businesses overall — and especially restaurants — face a similarly grim situation. According to McKinsey, it will likely take at least five years for affected sectors to recover from the pandemic. Between 1.4 million and 2.1 million US small businesses could close permanently.

The private jet business, however, is approaching cruising altitude. Through membership programs, package sales, fractional ownership, and other schemes, demand for private aviation is continuing to grow as the wealthy find ways to travel while limiting their exposure to COVID-19.

By the end of June, traffic for private jet operators was up to 78% of the previous year's numbers, while commercial airlines were closer to 25%, according to the New York Times. Over the July 4 weekend, private jet demand actually increased 5% over 2019 levels.

For the private jet industry, a heavy helping of federal aid worked exactly as intended. Companies facing downturns were able to survive the immediate and devastating impact of the pandemic, and now find themselves strongly positioned as their unique industry sees a boom in demand.

"Many who once thought of ownership as a luxury, now see jet ownership as a necessity for protecting health and getting to places that they need to get to safely and efficiently," said Tarascio, the Ventura Air CEO. 

He predicts strong growth ahead, and is in the process of acquiring three more planes.

Happy Saturday!

This week was a nonstop S-1 filing frenzy. Just to name a few: Unity, Sumo Logic, Asana, Jfrog, and Snowflake all filed on Monday; Palantir's S-1 flipped on Tuesday; and digital health startup GoodRx revealed its IPO documents on Friday. 

While there's a long list of companies gearing up for public debuts, be it through direct listings or IPOs, more investors are also getting the green light to pile into private markets. 

The SEC announced this week that it's "modernizing" its definition of an accredited investor. Now, instead of meeting an income or asset threshold, investors will basically just need to demonstrate that they're knowledgeable enough about private markets to jump in. 

At BlackRock, meanwhile, the business of offering assets like private equity, hedge funds, and real estate has become a core part of the firm's long-term growth plan. Rebecca Ungarino took a look at who's driving this massive push:

Meet the 17 power players at BlackRock carrying out CEO Larry Fink's vision to turbocharge private equity and alternative investments growth

Keep reading for a peek inside Citadel's summer camp bubble, a rundown of Goldman Sachs' real-estate investment banking team, and the latest on how Harvard Business School is handling virtual recruiting for MBA students. 

If you're not yet a subscriber to our finance newsletters, you can sign up here.

Have a great weekend, 

Meredith 

How $34 billion hedge fund Citadel pulled off an in-person summer internship 'bubble' for more than 100 college students

Bradley Saacks took a look at how billionaire Ken Griffin's Citadel created a bubble for interns at a resort in Kohler, Wisconsin, by renting out the entire place. 

Blackstone is encouraging US workers to return to the office after Labor Day, and that's putting some employees on edge

As Casey Sullivan reported this week, Blackstone is gearing up to have more US employees return to the office after Labor Day. All investment professionals and asset managers will have a COVID test sent to their homes by Aug. 31. 

Big private-equity firms are piling into tech deals. Top execs at Carlyle, KKR, and Warburg Pincus laid out how they're angling for an edge.

Private-equity funds are dumping more money into technology companies as the pandemic tanks sectors more reliant on in-person business.

Now, as new entrants crowd the space, big players like KKR, Blackstone, and Carlyle, are leaning on their size to stand out. Casey Sullivan and Meghan Morris spoke with 12 private-equity investors, consultants and portfolio company CEOs to get an overview of the new competitive landscape.

Meet 7 Goldman Sachs power players advising on industry-defining deals like Blackstone's $18.7 billion bet on warehouses

Alex Nicoll spoke with seven bankers who help run Goldman Sachs' real-estate coverage group to learn more about their roles, how the practice's business has grown, and the ways the pandemic has affected what they do.

How Harvard Business School is adjusting timelines and formats for high-stakes recruiting 

Harvard Business School is reinventing how it does recruiting this year, going fully virtual during the coronavirus pandemic. It's brought on a legion of more than 80 career coaches and mentors to provide support for students and is offering a more flexible recruiting timetable.

Business Insider got a look inside HBS' program and spoke to two administrators laying the groundwork for recruiting this fall.

Careers

• RANKED: Bonuses at 10 bulge-bracket banks, where investment-banking analysts can get $50,000-plus payouts their first year out of college
• 9 recession-proof legal practice areas set to boom, according to top lawyers and recruiters

Real estate

• The venture arm of a massive Canadian pension plan takes us inside its search for its first construction tech investment. Here's its playbook.
• Apple is in talks to potentially expand its NYC footprint. It shows how tech is becoming a lone bright spot for a battered commercial real-estate market.

Wealth management

• Goldman Sachs just lost another wealth team to UBS in one of the industry's biggest financial adviser moves of the year

Asset management

• A first-of-its kind ETF focused solely on the burgeoning US cannabis industry is prepping a launch after spending a year navigating regulatory red tape

Fintech 

• Equifax's CTO explains why he's going all in on the public cloud instead of taking baby steps — and how that decision was more critical than picking which provider to go with
• Visa is backing a fintech looking to eliminate checkout hardware, and it's an example of the future of how we'll pay for things
• Here's the 20-slide pitch deck Finix used to sell its vision of payments-as-a-service and nab $30 million from backers including Amex's VC arm

Law

• 2 GCs on how they made the switch from Big Law firms like Ropes & Gray and Sullivan & Cromwell to the buzzy world of startups
• 7 fintech general counsels explain how to navigate legal issues in a move fast, break things startup culture
• A top M&A investment banker has sued NYC and a group of building companies over his wife's death after she was crushed by debris that fell from a 17-story building

• Worksport, a manufacturer of pickup-truck accessories, plans to launch a pickup-bed cover with built-in solar panels. 
• The Terravis system will allow users to sustainably power tools and other appliances even when they're far from the grid. 
• Worksport says its system will eventually be able to add range to electric pickups from companies like Rivian, Bollinger, and Ford. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

With a flood of electric pickup trucks poised to hit the market in the near future, aftermarket accessory companies are starting to go green, too. 

Worksport, a Toronto-based manufacturer of pickup-truck accessories, recently announced the Terravis system, a folding tonneau cover — the fancy term for a pickup-bed cover — with built-in solar panels. The idea is to take power from the sun, store it in bed-mounted batteries, and use it to power appliances and tools at jobsites, campsites, or anywhere else an outlet isn't within arm's reach. 

Many pickup trucks already offer outlets in the bed, but they don't run off of solar. The Terravis system also includes a portable powerpack with two outlets that lets users bring power to wherever it's needed. 

The Terravis system will fit traditional gas-powered trucks from roughly the 2010 model year forward, the company says. Worksport also plans to develop models for upcoming electric pickups from Rivian, GM, Ford, Bollinger, and others, claiming the system will be able to add range to hybrid and electric trucks, once they become available. 

"Everyone is moving towards solar power and renewable energy sources and so is the pick-up truck market," Steven Rossi, Worksport's CEO, said in a press release. "Our system is being designed to, among other things, provide a meaningful source of energy for the new wave of electric trucks."

The Terravis website says that the solar system will "provide meaningful power for the forthcoming electric trucks," but the range gains from such a system likely wouldn't be too great.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, known for setting overly optimistic goals, said that a solar-panel system on the Cybertruck would generate somewhere around 15 miles of range per day. Hyundai says that the solar roof on its new Sonata Hybrid — which appears to be much smaller than Worksport's setup — could provide two miles of range per day. 

Still, even a few miles of extra range could help in a pinch. 

The Terravis system is still in the design and funding phase, and Worksport expects to launch the product "within 12-24 months of funding."

• Marine Pfc. Austin Ferrell broke the rifle-qualification record at the Marines Corps' Parris Island recruit depot this summer, earning the title of deadliest shot.
• For Ferrell, who grew up as an avid shooter, the rifle course was another day at the office, but he still picked up some new techniques from his Marine instructors.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Marine Pfc. Austin Ferrell made headlines when he earned the title of deadliest shot at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, but the 21-year-old who grew up shooting in Culpeper, Virginia, was actually hoping to shoot better than his record-breaking rifle qualification score.

Shooting an M16A4 rifle equipped with a 4X, fixed-power rifle combat optic, Farrell broke the depot record for Table One rifle qualification in July with a total score of 248 out of 250.

The previous record on Table One — which includes shooting from the prone, kneeling and standing positions at target ranges of 200, 300, and 500 yards — was 247 out of 250.

Ferrell, who speaks in a humble tone, said he was excited about setting the new record, but not as much as some of his fellow Marines.

"I am excited, but to be honest with you ... I grew up shooting long range, so a rifle that I built at home — at 500 yards, I could put all the shots in a coffee mug," Ferrell told Military.com. "So me personally, I am not all that impressed with it."

Before joining the Marines, Ferrell spent much of his time shooting and has built nine AR-15 rifles.

"I have been shooting since I was a little kid; I really got into when I was 14 and I really started taking off with it," Ferrell said, who describes himself as a pretty serious firearms collector.

"I have shot a little bit of everything but the past couple of years mainly long-range calibers like 6.5mm Creedmoor, .300 Win Mag, 5.56mm," he said.

All that practice served Ferrell well, allowing him to shoot his record-breaking score on pre-qualification day. Marine drill instructors submitted that score, so he did not have to shoot on qualification day, Ferrell said.

Ferrell did say that he learned several new techniques from the primary marksmanship instructors, especially during the different firing positions.

"I had a pretty good foundation before I came here ... but the techniques that the Marine Corps teaches are excellent for kids that have never shot," Ferrell said.

"A lot of kids in my platoon literally went from never shooting a rifle in their life to shooting expert in Marine Corps qualification," he said. "And that is with one week of class time essentially, then you have two days of practice and then pre-qual."

Ferrell said the average score in his platoon was 235 out of the 250 max.

"My entire platoon shot expert on Table One and about half of them had never even shot a rifle before," he said.

One of the best pieces of advice for shooters who struggle to perform better is to stay relaxed, Ferrell said

"The biggest thing, something that goes along with what all the primary marksmanship instructors teach here at Parris Island, is just stay calm," he said.

"I noticed like when transitioning from the different yard lines for shooting like from 200 to 300, a couple of them would jog or run to get back there quicker. ... You want to stay relaxed and they run back there, and their heart rate is up when they are trying to shoot.

"The biggest thing is just to stay relaxed."

And while controlled breathing is an "extremely important" fundamental, it's not as crucial as proper trigger squeeze, Ferrell said.

"You can only control your breathing so much unless you have years of practice, so there are ways around having perfect breathing control, but I would say the biggest thing with shooting is trigger control," Ferrell said.

With unsteady breathing "you might shoot a little high," but pulling the trigger slightly to the right instead of straight back can cause the muzzle to move 1/16th of an inch — enough to take the shot off-target at 500 yards, Ferrell said.

Ferrell is now about two weeks away from graduating from boot camp, something a high-school football injury almost prevented him from doing.

In 2017, Ferrell was playing football for Riverbend High School as an offensive guard when he went down on the field and another player fell on top of his thumb and "shattered the whole joint and tore the ligament," he said.

The injury initially disqualified him from the Marine Corps, but he eventually had it repaired in surgery and signed up for a five-year enlistment, he said.

For now, shooting will not be Ferrell's primary job since he is on track to become an intelligence specialist.

"I actually always wanted to be a sniper growing up, but a lot of retired military members that I talked to said, 'there is not much of a job market outside the military for a sniper,'" said Ferrell, who scored "very well" on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test and qualified for the intel job.

After learning his skill, Ferrell said he plans to try out for Marine Forces Special Operations Command.

"Hopefully, I can still shoot pretty good, and maybe they will send me to Scout Sniper School," he said.

— Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com.

• There are many ways the advice "fake it till you make it" can backfire as you navigate the job market. 
• It might seem better to pretend like you know more than you do, but that approach can work against you in the long run, and hold you back from asking questions about what you need to learn.
• Strike a balance between being confident and humble: Don't dismiss others, control your tone to avoid sounding condescending, and ask questions when you don't know the answers. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The longstanding adage "Fake it till you make it" coaches us to behave as if we're in a position well before we master it. If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, act like you already are one. If you seek investments, imitate the behavior of someone who acquires funding often. If you pursue partnerships with high-level players, replicate the actions of an individual worthy of that alliance, and so on.

This practice, done well, must include visualization and knowing where you ultimately want to wind up. If you know what you seek — by describing the outcome and visualizing what you're planning for — you're much more likely to get it.

Or are you?

What if FITYMI doesn't work? What if this sage advice induces the exact opposite of what you want? Remarkably, this happens most of the time. The majority of people tend not to think about how FITYMI can cause a problem or even totally backfire.

Here are four common scenarios where "fake it till you make it" will undeniably be the root of your failure.

1. When you think you're the most important person in the room

Nerves, left unchecked, get the best of us at times. We're constantly told to fake our confidence, to hold our head high and to square our shoulders as we pitch an idea. Our mindset of being confident is a pillar of success, right? Who wants to work with someone who's afraid of their own shadow or who doesn't seem sure of the promises they're making or the business plan they're touting? We're supposed to renovate our thinking and be in the positive space we desire. Sometimes, though, a small shift one way or the other will cause you to come across as if you're more important than anyone else in the room. No one likes a braggart, especially mixed with those darn nerves that are ever-present. So make sure your FITYMI confidence isn't taken to an extreme. It's a delicate balance of having enough confidence to be investment-worthy (financial or otherwise) while also being humble and authentic enough to have people want to work with you. 

2. When you act like you're better than other people

It's important for someone to take the lead in every meeting, to guide the process, flow and outcome; to take charge and drive the conversation; to determine who can speak and when. If you're the entrepreneur sharing your ideas with other people, naturally you want to behave in a way that reflects your predesigned plan. After all, you've probably spent hours thinking about how to conduct the meeting. Yet you need to make sure you're flexible enough to serpentine, like they used to say, or simply shift and pivot if someone else in the room wants to change direction. It never works to act as if you're better than others by railroading someone who makes changes on the spot. You're all in that room together. Don't dismiss anyone or treat them as if they're less than. Go with the flow. That, in and of itself, gives you noticeable strength — which is exactly what you were looking for in the first place.

3. When your language and verbal communication appears pompous and condescending

Verbal communication matters. Your tone, choice of words, and how you deliver them can make the fine-tuned difference between success and failure. You may not like what someone says in your meeting. You may not like how it denigrates your presentation. But the moment you let irritation creep into your voice or body language, you'll come across, at best, as condescending. If you continue to push back on the person who's derailing your flow, you'll come across as pompous. When that happens, it's best to simply end the meeting before things get worse. 

4. When you think you know more than you do

You studied, you Googled, you spoke to friends. You did all you could to learn, memorize, or remember some quirky obscure facts, all in hope of achieving FITYMI fame before that big meeting. You start with a bang, seemingly knowledgeable, then you take one small step too far and realize you opened up a subject that reveals you aren't as well-informed as you appeared only seconds before. The mood in the room shifts immediately and you begin to play catch-up by changing back to a subject that didn't require going beyond the second search page in Google. The rule to remember here: Stay within the limits of your knowledge. It's OK and sometimes welcomed to ask questions and not know everything. Most people in powerful positions liked to be asked questions. Questions can protect your FITYMI skills. Showing you know a small amount, while at the same time revealing your desire to learn more, can prove to be quite beneficial and refreshing. 

So how are your FITYMI skills now?  

The most important person in the room is generally the one with the most money or grandest title. Pure and simple. That person is usually the one in the most senior position, the one who holds the key to final decision-making.

You don't want to enter any meeting with your tail between your legs, your shoulders slightly slumped, and your negative self-chatter dragging you into the depths of insecurity. However, watch out for swinging to the other side of the spectrum. You need to be very careful as you incorporate visualization techniques and confidence-bolstering exercises to ensure you come across as worthy of an investment, partnership, or even a job for that matter.

Make sure you always create an atmosphere where each person in the room, in their own way, feels as if they are the most important person there. Hone your FITYMI skills, yet learn how to be nuanced and teach yourself how to keep the "faking it" to a minimum and the "making it" to a maximum. Understand finesse and you've mastered the powerful practice of "fake it till you make it" on that bumpy, unforgiving road to entrepreneurial success.

• Jason Diamond is a Brooklyn-based writer and editor. The following is an excerpt from his new book, "The Sprawl: Reconsidering the Weird American Suburbs."
• In it, he discusses the rise of suburbs in the US, and its transformation from its post-war, classically American roots into a hub of diverse groups. 
• As more baby boomers grew successful in a healthy economy, "the narrative changed," he said. Traditions were rejected, suburbs turned bland, and homes got bigger. 
• The collection of essays points to other modern-day examples, history, and Diamond's personal life to examine how suburbia has shaped society over time. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

For the children and grandchildren of people who were old enough to see the beginning of the modern suburbs — Generation X, the millennials, and Generation Z, born, according to most definitions, from the mid-sixties all the way to the present day — the great promise of suburbia had lost some of its luster by the time they arrived.

This was due in large part to slow economic growth (otherwise known as "stagflation") in the seventies that put a halt to the forward momentum of the decades following World War II. Fuel shortages meant getting around wasn't as easy as it had been in previous decades; houses built in the forties and fifties were starting to show wear; and in the sixties and early seventies, white baby boomers who had been given the gift of a healthy economy and the bright, shiny future outside the cities where their elders had lived and toiled rejected many of the traditions, norms, and laws that in some cases had been in place for centuries.

With the emerging generation gap came a rejection of what previous generations considered the American Dream. The narrative changed.

The suburbs were bland and bourgeois, no longer the space-age neighborhoods of tomorrow that they once were. The shine had worn off, but developers kept building more homes and neighborhoods, and people kept moving to them despite housing market crises popping up throughout every one of the last three decades of the twentieth century.

Fortune 500 companies moved outside cities, big box stores opened outside cities, and the suburbs kept getting bigger and bigger, often awkwardly.

You could go nearly anywhere in America and find housing developments, rows of ranch homes covered in aluminum siding with green lawns that all looked very similar, situated next to big gaps of empty or wooded areas.

You could drive a little ways and find nondescript business parks that went dark and silent at night, and of course you could find suburbia's Main Street, the mall (more on that later). This is a typical description of the suburbs as people who experienced suburbia from the seventies onward might recall them.

The houses grew bigger, and more space was taken for townhouses, apartments, and especially McMansions.

These homes, as Kate Wagner of McMansion Hell points out, are guilty of many crimes, from a total lack of balance among the parts of the building to the bad craftsmanship all the way to the often horrible landscaping.

"McMansions lack architectural rhythm," she writes in one post. "This is one of the easiest ways to determine between a McMansion and a, well, mansion."

The often gaudy and sometimes straight-up grotesque McMansions grew in stature thanks in large part to developers like Toll Brothers, who, in William Levitt fashion, mass-produced the homes identified by, as Virginia Savage McAlester points out in A Field Guide to American Houses, "complex high-pitched roof[s]" that tend to be "favored for huge custom-designed homes of five thousand to ten thousand square feet and up."

The houses typically employ a mishmash of styles that doesn't make much architectural sense (columns on a colonial or craftsman revival home, for instance).

As Leigh Gallagher writes in her book "The End of the Suburbs," "Provenance and accuracy weren't as important — it was size and scale and how much it glittered that mattered."

You also saw blossom this idea that no matter what critics said about the suburbs, an old-timey feel could be built in newer communities where everything was laid out according to plans that said how every little thing was supposed to look. The look would create a certain feel, and the idea was that people would pay big money because these places felt like they came from a simpler time.

As we've seen when it comes to suburbia, nothing goes according to plan.

Long Grove, Illinois, is one of those places: It has its share of McMansions and a promise that the village would maintain a semi-rural atmosphere. It was once indeed a "long grove," before white settlers came along. There's still grass growing wild, and some of the hickory trees there were around long before the neighborhood.

The Village Tavern on Old McHenry Road claims to be the oldest restaurant and tavern in Illinois, dating back to 1847. Private roads are encouraged to limit traffic. Despite the buildup over the years, it still feels like there's a lot of open space.

I know all of this not because I researched it, but because I lived there. My family had done well enough throughout the eighties that my father felt an upgrade right before the start of the nineties was in order.

Our progression is a very American story: my father was born in Europe right after the war to Jewish parents who barely survived the Nazis.

When they came to America, his parents worked and worked and worked until they finally found a niche-enough business, a little hole that nobody else was filling (they manufactured wafer candy, produced inexpensively and sold at a low price; the boast I heard was they outsold American staples like Oreos in the eighties), and moved from the city to the suburbs.

In the seventies they eventually ended up in the Chicagoland suburb of Morton Grove, where my family finally became homeowners in America, purchasing a cool-looking modern ranch home with a cross-hipped roof and some cool midcentury flourishes.

After my parents separated, most of my childhood was spent living all around the Chicagoland area. I was shuttled between both parents' various homes, including the house in Morton Grove my grandparents had purchased a decade earlier that my father lived in for a brief time after my grandmother passed and my grandfather retired to Florida. Eventually he sold that house and settled in Long Grove.

In a McMansion.

Used by permission from The Sprawl (Coffee House Press, 2020). Copyright © 2020 by Jason Diamond

Jason Diamond is a Brooklyn-based writer and editor. His first book was "Searching for John Hughes."

• As water levels rise due to climate change, coastal flooding is becoming more and more threatening.
• This is likely to cause a new housing crisis, as home valuations on the coast haven't fully baked in the threat of climate change and flooding.
• But there are steps Congress and the federal government can do to head off this crisis before it gets too severe.
• Katie Oran is a Master's of Regional Planning student at Cornell University.
• Yuliya Panfil is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Future of Property Rights program at New America.
• This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

As climate change continues to increase the frequency and intensity of storms, and as sea level rise and coastal erosion push storm damage further inland, millions of additional American properties are at risk for catastrophic damage each year.

A major report released in June shows that federal flood maps underestimate the number of homes and businesses at risk of flooding by a stunning 67%

The cost of this flooding, much of it coming from hurricanes and other storms, is staggering.

Between 1980 and 2019, the cost of storm damage in the United States has totaled $1.75 trillion. That is $300 billion more than the estimated total value of all property that sits within 700 feet of the US coastline.

To put it simply: the US Government and private insurance companies have spent more money rebuilding damaged coastal property than it would have cost to relocate every single home within this risky zone. 

Yet, banks and private lenders continue to issue between $60 billion and $100 billion in new mortgages in these high risk coastal zones each year, allowing thousands of new families to move into harm's way. Lenders are able to get away with issuing these mortgages because they know that they can re-package and sell them to government-secured enterprises, like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. After billion-dollar hurricanes between 2004 and 2012, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw a 10% increase in the unloading of risky mortgages from private lenders. 

These mortgages aren't just enabling families to move into harm's way; they're putting billions of taxpayer dollars at risk. It's time to stop subsidizing these risky homes, and proactively craft a response to climate change that protects not only coastal residents but our entire economy. 

Rising tides don't raise all homes

It's clear that our current policies are not fully accounting for the threat of increased flooding due to climate change.

The National Bureau for Economic Research thinks that property in flood prone areas is overvalued by an estimated $34 billion, and that housing markets do not fully account for the risks of flooding in the valuation of property across the country.

Economic policy expert Dr. Lindsay Owens argues in a newly released report that unlike private banks, "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which collectively guarantee the majority of residential mortgages, don't formally account for the risks that climate change poses to their portfolio in their capital requirements." 

Fannie and Freddie aren't ignorant of the risks, but government rules prohibit them from pricing or declining mortgages based on climate risk. Former chief economist at Freddie Mac, Sean Becketti, wrestled in a 2016 monthly Insight report with the challenges housing economists face. He mused that property values could fall as coastal homes continue to flood, as lenders and insurance companies begin to rethink doing business in these zones, or even if owners begin to sell their homes to escape the risk. The question of when this devaluation of properties will occur, however, has no clear answer. 

As a result, buoyed by the government, coastal property values have remained relatively stable despite evidence that some banks are reconsidering 30-year mortgage in high risk coastal zones.

As hurricanes and coastal flooding become more frequent and severe, economists and housing experts agree that we will reach a tipping point at which millions of homes like the one Becketti described in his 2016 example will become valueless, stranded assets. 

This massive devaluation sets the stage for a new climate driven housing crisis. And the more risky coastal mortgages Fannie and Freddie acquire, the larger the bill for taxpayers when the housing crash occurs. 

It doesn't have to be this way

There are clear steps for the country to avoid this coastal housing crisis.

Congress and the Federal Housing Finance Agency — which regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — should immediately require all government-secured enterprises to account for the risk of climate change in any future pricing or purchasing decisions.

 We must also quantify the potential losses that may result from already-secured mortgages, in the event they become literally, or figuratively, underwater. 

It's also clear that our current strategy of reacting to climate change impacts, instead of proactively working to reduce future risk is failing us. The government must incentivize families in risky coastal regions to relocate by offering them buy-outs. 

These types of efforts, called managed retreat, have been ongoing sporadically for decades, but without a cohesive national strategy they become expensive and inequitable. Not only that: managed retreat programs are underfunded and so complicated that only the highest capacity local governments tend to take them on.

Demolishing the highest risk homes, and preserving the land as open space, would help mitigate the financial threat these homes pose to the entire housing market, and also protect homes further inland from experiencing storm driven flooding. 

The key, however, is for the government to listen to the science and act now to prevent Americans from being swept up in another housing crisis, this time caused by climate change.

• The company I report for went fully remote in March to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, and I'll be working from home for at least another six months.
• To prepare for long-term remote work, I moved into the largest room in my unit and rearranged the space to function as my office and my bedroom using a cloth partition to divide the room into two sections.
• I've been struggling to maintain a balance between my work life and my personal life for the last four months, so I found a way to literally separate the two.
• My job is stressful, even from home. After speaking to a therapist about how nature benefits mental health, I brought plants into my space.
• Here's exactly how I arranged the space to serve me as a reporter while maintaining a work-life balance.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

I work remotely from my bedroom in Brooklyn's Bed-Stuy neighborhood. For $950 a month, a get 150 square feet to myself in an apartment where I share a bathroom, kitchen, and living space with two roommates.

I'll be reporting from home for at least another six months, so I decided to move into the biggest bedroom, which used to look like this.

Before I moved in, a queen-sized bed took up most of the space in the room.

I replaced the queen-sized bed that came with the room with my own full-sized one. This way, I was able to fit the bed against the longer wall ...

... while still leaving a small walkway through the space.

Next, I set up my work station. I used an entryway table better-suited to my previous room. It's not ideal, since there's no leg room underneath, but it's a desk I already paid for, so I'm using it.

After four months of struggling to maintain a balance between my work life and my personal life, I realized I needed to find a way to literally separate the two.

To separate the bed from the workspace, I used a cloth partition that I made out of a tapestry by cutting two tiny holes into its top corners and hooking them onto the ceiling.

This makes my room feel almost like two rooms without taking up any of the floor space.

So when I'm relaxing, I can't even see my office space without moving the tapestry.

This is what the personal side of my room looks like. It includes my bed, desktop computer, wardrobe, hobbies, and most of my plants.

"Studies show that just looking at nature calms our brain," therapist Mark Loewen told me for a story I previously wrote for Business Insider. So I filled my room with plants. Six of them live on my window sill, one hangs from the ceiling ...

Source: Business Insider

... and I keep one with me at my desk during the workday.

The right corner of my room is reserved for my hobbies. I keep my electric drum set, ukulele, and film developing materials back here.

Playing drums helps me de-stress from work. I typically hop on the kit during breaks to play a few funky beats.

So far, this remote work situation is serving me better than my previous setups.

• President Donald Trump's policy on China has always had unclear and shifting goals and so far produced few results.
• Now, with a closely contested election approaching, Trump has embraced a hardline on Beijing, but it remains uncertain where this hawkish turn with take US-China relations, writes Kimberly Ann Elliott, a visiting scholar at the George Washington University.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Not long ago, The New York Times labeled President Donald Trump the "biggest obstacle" to his own administration's China policy.

Trump's trade war with China, which he launched as part of his campaign promise to get tough on its unfair trade practices, has always had unclear and shifting goals, while producing minimal results.

Even as his administration has taken a relatively tough line against China's high-tech industrial policies, Trump's odd affinity for authoritarian leaders, including his "good friend" in China, Xi Jinping, kept getting in the way of a coherent policy, especially when it came to protecting human rights.

Any ambivalent feelings about China and its government seem to have vanished with Trump's need for a scapegoat to blame for his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. Until this summer, the White House mostly ignored Beijing's efforts to squelch dissent in Hong Kong and took relatively minor measures in response to egregious human rights violations against the mostly Muslim Uighur minority in Xinjiang.

In his memoir about his time in the White House, former national security adviser John Bolton asserts that, after large protests broke out in Hong Kong last year, Trump said he didn't want to get involved. "We have human rights problems, too," Bolton heard him say.

Worse, while China was putting Uighurs in so-called "reeducation" centers that are really forced labor camps, Bolton claims that Trump told Xi to keep building the internment camps because he believed that was "exactly the right thing to do."

But now, the gloves have suddenly come off, as the US has imposed an array of new sanctions over Beijing's repression of dissent in Hong Kong and its human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The White House has also further tightened export controls on Chinese telecom giant Huawei and, earlier this month, it issued an order banning Americans from doing business with two hugely popular Chinese-owned apps, TikTok and WeChat.

Congress can take some credit for this more aggressive White House approach to China. Late in 2019, Congress passed two bills authorizing sanctions against individuals "responsible for committing acts that violate internationally recognized human rights in Hong Kong" and restricting exports to the Hong Kong police of items that could be used against protesters, including "tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets … stun guns, and tasers."

After expressing concern about the legislation because his administration was in the midst of trade negotiations with Beijing, Trump signed it, but then did little to implement it.

After the Chinese government imposed a harsh new security law on Hong Kong earlier this summer, which authorizes further measures to crack down on dissent there, Trump issued an executive order withdrawing Hong Kong's "special status" with the US.

This means that Hong Kong will no longer be treated more favorably than China with respect to trade and diplomatic relations, since the US considers China in violation of the "one country, two systems" arrangement that it agreed to as part of Britain's handover of Hong Kong in 1997, which was designed to give it substantial autonomy from Beijing.

The Trump administration followed that up this month with its first sanctions under the 2019 legislation. It barred Hong Kong's chief executive, Carrie Lam, and other senior officials in Hong Kong and mainland China from traveling to the US and froze any assets they might hold under American jurisdiction.

These sanctions are largely symbolic — Lam said she would "laugh off" the sanctions, since she has no assets in the US and no plans to travel there. But at least they send a belated message to China that its actions in Hong Kong are not acceptable to Washington.

Congress also compelled the Trump administration to punish Chinese officials allegedly involved in the repression in Xinjiang by passing the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act this past spring. Trump already had authority to take action under the Global Magnitsky Act, which authorizes similar sanctions for human rights abuses anywhere in the world, but Congress included new reporting requirements in the legislation as added pressure on the White House.

The Trump administration had imposed restrictions on exports of some items to local government entities and Chinese companies implicated in forced labor and other abuses in Xinjiang. But until recently, it had not targeted high-level officials or companies that are major suppliers to American brands, such as Apple and Ralph Lauren.

In a revealing interview recently with Axios, Trump admitted that he had not done more to sanction China over Xinjiang in 2018 and 2019 because he didn't want to interfere with the trade negotiations.

Now, however, with his reelection campaign heating up and the coronavirus still raging through the country, even Trump's much-coveted "phase one" trade deal with China may be at risk.

Trump said earlier this month that he had canceled bilateral talks to discuss implementation of the agreement because "I don't want to talk to China right now." Aides later said that the talks had merely been delayed and that the postponement did not mean that the deal was off.

But the future of that agreement — much less a "phase two" deal — is very much up in the air, with Chinese purchases of American soybeans and other goods lagging the phase one commitments by a substantial amount.

While congressional pressure has played a role in triggering a more aggressive posture toward China, electoral politics are also clearly at play. Action to confront China over its miserable human rights record is long overdue, and there is no question that Beijing poses serious challenges to American interests and values with its industrial and trade policies, and its human rights abuses.

But Trump chose to ignore the latter, and on the former, he signed a minimal trade deal that does little more than cater to the farm lobby in solidly Republican red states by mandating set amounts of Chinese purchases. Trump's electoral calculations then shifted, as his poll numbers began tanking because of his utter failure in managing the pandemic.

For Trump, it was easier to blame Beijing and let the China hawks come to the fore than to admit to that failure. But unlike the Soviet Union during the Cold War, China is a major global economic player, and erratic, politically driven US policies that don't recognize that reality will leave both sides worse off.

While the sanctions over human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong have been primarily symbolic, the escalating actions against Huawei, and more recently the orders restricting TikTok and WeChat, could lead to a balkanized internet that puts American companies at a disadvantage and undermines the goal of an interconnected world.

Trying to "decouple" more broadly may slow China's rise, but it is unlikely to be effective in changing Chinese behavior. What's more, it would carry significant costs for American business and consumers. As Edward Alden argued last week, the only certainty right now is that we don't know where this is all going to end up.

Kimberly Ann Elliott is a visiting scholar at the George Washington University Institute for International Economic Policy, and a visiting fellow with the Center for Global Development. Her WPR column appears every Tuesday.

• A recent CDC report revealed how four summer camps in Maine were able to operate while successfully limiting COVID-19 transmission. 
• Jack Hodgson, a former director at a non-profit New Jersey summer camp, now a postgraduate researcher at Northumbria University in Newcastle, England, says this is encouraging news — but there are several caveats.
• Not every camp will have the infrastructure and resources in place to pull off what occurred in Maine.
• The "culture of compliance" was a major reason for the Maine camps' success — and that will be difficult to achieve on most college campuses, not to mention within the rest of the country.
• To keep students and faculty safe, colleges must meet high standards of safety; right now, camps are showing them up. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

A recent CDC study showed how four Maine summer camps operated successfully without COVID-19 transmission this summer. It's great news for an industry that has taken a big hit, and the study also includes important takeaways for schools and colleges. 

As a former summer camp director who now works in higher education, I won't be breaking out the S'mores or deleting my Zoom app just yet. Here's why.

What the Maine camps did right

When it comes to coronavirus, you cannot be hopeful or casual in your approach. Things can go wrong quickly. A single camp in Georgia saw 260 cases. The University of Alabama had at least 560 after being open a week.

The folks in Maine showed us what can work. Staff and campers isolated pre-arrival and were tested on arrival. Positive cases were isolated, and contacts quarantined. Camp also looked a little different: Indoor programs were minimized, sports were played with kids staying apart, and strict mask-wearing rules were in place. Small groups were formed who dined together, and bathroom access was limited to single cohorts. 

Despite this, a small number of cases came up. Thorough monitoring, speedy isolation, and quick testing prevented any transmissions from those cases. 

What this means for other camps

In a normal year, camping is a $26 billion industry that employs over a million staff to host over 25 million kids. Only 18% of overnight camps opened this year.

In an industry that includes a significant number of non-profits, who provide transformative experiences to the most deserving, this is tragic. 

For the first time since 1899, my old stomping ground, YMCA Camp Mason (Hardwick, New Jersey) did not host summer camp. Camps like Mason have adapted their business models to these uncertain times. The CEO there, Keith VanDerzee, told me how renting cabins out to families, who agreed to staggered amenity access and other rules, had helped ensure camp would be there for kids next summer. His focus now is on helping local schools learn safely in cohorts by using the camp's 500 acre facility.

This CDC report helps camps look to next year with optimism. The American Camp Association has commissioned four more research projects. Their president and CEO Tom Rosenberg told me the priority is safety as the ACA works to "harvest all the knowledge possible" from this summer for 2021. 

Putting my director's hat back on, I think that there will be some that don't open. Not every camp will have the infrastructure and resources in place to pull off what they did in Maine. Suitable buildings for isolation of individuals and cohorts will need to exist. Someone will need to pay for a lot of tests and an enhanced cleaning regime. Improving ventilation may mean expensive construction work for some camps. 

These measures will be more important, too, with kids back in school and guardians back at work, making pre-arrival isolation challenging. The ACA is right to be putting measures in place for next summer already.

What about schools and colleges?

For residential schools, the findings of this report will be easily applicable. For typical schools, with kids going home to parents with public-facing jobs, the same level of protection is impossible. Decision-makers need to understand they are more vulnerable. In such cases, the lead author of the CDC study, Dr. Laura Blaisdell, says it's increasingly important that all other measures are strictly implemented. 

Given the size and riches of institutions, colleges have come up with laughable and flimsy reopening plans. Yale even told students to "emotionally prepare" for deaths in their community. That's not a reopening plan. 

Dr. Blaisdell's study sets the standards needed for success, but some measures will not work for colleges. Outside programming at summer camp, the world of "liquid sunshine" and rainbows, works — but that's not going to fly in Vermont in December. Creating and enforcing cohort bathroom usage seems like a nonstarter too. 

Leaders must consider if they are meeting enough standards. If they are not, they need to reconsider plans for face-to-face teaching. 

Camps and the "culture of compliance" 

In an email to me, Blaisdell highlighted to me how important a "culture of compliance" was in the success achieved in Maine. This is the solution — but it's also a problem. America in 2020 doesn't seem to vibe with a "culture of compliance" when it comes to social distancing and masks; the very phrase is probably going to get some folk hollering "freedom" and reaching for the nearest star-spangled-banner. 

In camps, you can have that culture. As a camp leader, I've had teenagers don tin-foil hats, crush watermelons (alien eggs), and explore a hole (meteorite crater) for clues. Last year, I couldn't get all undergraduates to do the reading or double-space their essays. Hoping for a "culture of compliance" in a large college community for a prolonged period seems fanciful.

The bottom line

The CDC report is great news for camps, showing what is possible. The industry is wasting no time in learning everything it can for next year so more kids will get back to camp. The planning going into that is showing up those in higher education. Leaders there must quickly figure out if they can realistically achieve the same standards to keep students and faculty safe.

Jack Hodgson is a former director at a non-profit New Jersey summer camp, a freelance writer, private tutor, and a PhD candidate at Northumbria University in Newcastle, England. He teaches both history and American studies. 

• QAnon supporters are set to attend at least three of President Donald Trump's 2020 campaign rallies this weekend.
• The fringe group has been gaining traction, with several QAnon supporters running for Congress and some positioned to win.
• Trump has not distanced himself from the far-right group, which operates on the belief that a mass of satanic and pedophiliac Democrats who are running a global sex-trafficking ring are out to get the president.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

At least three of President Donald Trump's rallies this weekend will be attended by QAnon supporters, a group of people who promote a far-right conspiracy that falsely says there is a mass of satanic and pedophiliac Democrats who run a global sex-trafficking ring in a fight against the president.

The events will be hosted in Georgia and Nevada, according to HuffPost. 

The Georgia event, held Friday evening, featured Angela Stanton-King, the Republican running for the deceased Rep. John Lewis' seat in Congress, the HuffPost reported.

Trump retweeted her twice earlier this month. Almost immediately after, Stanton-King tweeted in all caps the QAnon rallying cry, "The storm is here," appearing to suggest that the president's retweets were validating the movement. 

Stanton-King has been clear about her belief that the world is plagued with pedophilia and sex-trafficking. "This isn't about COVID 19 or BLACK LIVES MATTER. This is a major cover up for PEDOPHILIA and HUMAN TRAFFICKING," she tweeted last month.

At the rally, Stanton-King spoke alongside Dr. Robin Armstrong, a doctor who said he has given nursing home patients the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat the coronavirus, the report said.

Trump has touted the drug as a possible cure for the disease but hydroxychloroquine has not been proven as a treatment for coronavirus. 

Stanton-King also vouched for the drug on Twitter, using the platform to spread misinformation about coronavirus. 

Two planned Saturday rallies will also expose voters to pushers of the QAnon movement. Tito Ortiz, an MMA fighter who uses a QAnon phrase in his Instagram bio, is expected to attend both events in Las Vegas and Henderson, Nevada, according to the Huffington Post. 

Ortiz has also attempted to sow misinformation on the coronavirus pandemic across his social media accounts. He posted a 10-minute video to Instagram meant to suggest that states have been falsifying data on the number of people who died because of the coronavirus. 

The coronavirus has infected more than 5.9 million people in the United States, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Of that sum, more than 181,000 people have died from it. 

Neither of the rallies this weekend require masks or personal protective equipment (PPE), and those who want to attend must sign a waiver releasing the Trump campaign from liability if anyone contracts the virus. 

Trump has not denounced QAnon publicly but instead has retweeted QAnon accounts. The president has also welcomed support from the group, saying earlier this month, "I don't know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate." A wave of QAnon supporters celebrated and thanked Trump for acknowledging them.

The promotion of QAnon from Trump and the GOP has led to growing bipartisan concern that the fringe group might be emboldened to act more publicly, especially as several QAnon supporters are running for Congress. 

The White House declined to comment when asked about the rallies. A representative from the Trump 2020 campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. 

Last year, the FBI designated QAnon as a domestic-terrorism group, saying it's filled with "conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists" and citing it as a growing threat. 

• If you want to start making money as a blogger, you need to focus less on content and more on growth.
• Adam Enfroy is an expert blogger who's worked his way up to 450,000 monthly readers and $80,000 in monthly revenue by prioritizing scaling and monetization strategies.
• Enfroy says to outsource tasks when you can to create a consistent flow of content that will in turn generate clicks, traffic, and revenue.
• Remember, this is your personal brand, so don't be afraid to experiment and learn from your mistakes. Pinpoint what worked and what didn't, and pivot as necessary. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

According to an article in The New York Times, 95% of bloggers fail.

It's evident that blogging advice doesn't always lead to blogging success. And as the search engine landscape gets more competitive, it may seem like it's too saturated to make money blogging today. 

Adam Enfroy begs to differ. He is an expert blogger who grew his readership to 450,000 monthly readers and told me he makes $80,000 per month in revenue — while spending $0 on advertising. I sat down with Adam in a recent interview and took the opportunity to ask him how he scaled his blog so quickly.

1. Focus less on writing and more on scaling

With limited time outside of a full-time job, starting and growing a side hustle can be challenging. "When I first learned how to start a blog, I had a stressful full-time job that took up 50 hours a week. I had to figure out how to scale my processes so I could spend my time in the most meaningful ways," said Adam. He began to outsource certain components of his blog — he hired a team to write first drafts and an assistant to help with link building and guest blogging. 

"It didn't cost much and freed me up to spend my time on what I'm best at — building relationships and influence in the digital space," he continued. "If I was just a tortured writer spending my nights clacking away at the keyboard writing every single word myself, I couldn't have scaled. Jeff Bezos doesn't write every word for Amazon.com; bloggers shouldn't have to do everything themselves." 

Adam's strategy worked. In less than a year and a half, he published over 120 articles on his blog and over 100 guest posts. Adam's blog income overtook his full-time salary and he left his job for good — just seven months after launching his blog. 

2. Plan your monetization strategy from day one

"Most bloggers are told to write about their passions and then figure out how to monetize their passion down the road," Adam said. "However, bloggers fail because they don't know how to transition from writer to business owner. They start with a passion in mind, write for years, get burned out when it's not working, and quit. If you flip the script and plan your monetization strategy before you even start, you're much more likely to succeed."

Adam says that this planning includes three core components: keyword research, content, and affiliate marketing. 

"All three of these disciplines need to mesh. For example, before you even begin your keyword research to see if people search for your topic, you first need to ask yourself if your topic can actually make money," Adam said. "For example, if I'm a fitness blogger, I could rank for fitness tips but that post may be hard to monetize. What if instead I ranked for best fitness bikes and pushed people to my affiliate links? There's a big difference in potential revenue."

Adam's mixture of review list posts and how-to guides are the formats he recommends to generate not just clicks and traffic, but blog revenue. 

According to Adam, "You need a mixture of posts that bring in high traffic and high-intent posts that generate revenue."

3. It's okay to make mistakes

Although it takes grit to launch a side hustle that lets you quit your full-time job, Adam says it's okay to make mistakes. "Blogs are living, breathing things. It's okay to experiment and fail; you just need to give yourself the freedom to pivot," Adam said. 

"In the past, I tried to create hyper-specific niche sites and I'd quit when they didn't pan out. Creating a personal brand blog gives me the freedom to adapt and change my content strategy if one area doesn't work," Adam continued. "I made a lot of mistakes. I started my blog on Squarespace and switched to WordPress. I wrote a bunch of travel content that I've since deleted. I put ads to my site way too late and still haven't even launched my online course."

Adam is open about his mistakes and documents them to his 35,000 email subscribers and his Facebook Group of 3,500 "Blogpreneurs" looking to follow in his footsteps.

"I documented this stuff so that others don't have to make the same mistakes I made. If I can help foster the next generation of bloggers, that makes everything worth it."

• The US spends more on its military than the next nine countries combined.
• The defense budget is bloated and includes plenty of money that could be better used elsewhere.
• During a national pandemic, it is unconscionable that this money isn't being spent on Americans in need.
• Savannah Wooten is an activist and nonprofit professional.
• This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The US is, quite literally, addicted to war. While it's no secret that the country has a long history of militarism, the sheer scale of the ongoing excess is staggering. Yet the tide may finally be turning, as Americans begin to take hawkish lawmakers to task for their defense industry contributions and unfettered support for costly forever wars.

As our leaders continue to mismanage the COVID-19 crisis, it's become clear that the nation has abjectly failed to prepare for one of the most severe national security threats of our lifetimes. And it calls into question just how necessary two decades of massive defense spending increases were when the government has proven ineffective against the most deadly threat the country has faced in that time.

US warfighting since 9/11 has cost $6.4 trillion, 770,000 lives, and counting. We spend more on our military than the next nine countries combined. Every year, Congress authorizes hundreds of billions of dollars for the Pentagon, consuming most of our discretionary budget that could otherwise fund programs that meet Americans' needs.

Instead, this money is dumped into a military-industrial vortex, used to pay defense contractors up to three times more than their federal employee counterparts, produce malfunctioning fighter jets and pad a nearly-$100 billion slush fund earmarked for "general warfighting."

The pandemic has amplified anger around this massive amount of US military spending. Frontline workers have called out the fact that billions of dollars supposedly poured into "safety" and "protection" did nothing to prevent the pandemic, provide personal protective equipment or adequately trace the spread of the virus.

This ire peaked in May when the Trump Administration chose to fly elite fighter jets over cities stricken by the virus whilst withdrawing from the World Health Organization and refusing to enact basic protection measures for essential workers. When these aircraft cost a grandiose $60,000 to operate per hour, it's not difficult to understand the frustration.

Similarly, national cries to defund the police have also increased the attention around the idea of defunding the US military. The movement that sprung up after the killing of George Floyd has brought all systems of violence into question, with organizers questioning the whopping $740 billion Pentagon budget alongside the $100 billion national police budget. Both of these massive funds perpetuate racialized violence and consumes funding that could be reallocated to meet tangible community needs.

The padded military budget also enables the US Department of Defense to over-produce gear and machinery that is handed off to police for storage, contributing to the over-militarization of US security forces. Never was this more brazenly on display than this summer, as officers brandished armored vehicles and shields at peaceful protests across the country and tear gassed citizens outside of the White House. 

A turning tide in Washington

Make no mistake — there's a good reason that these budgets keep expanding. The defense industry hustles hard for its billions.

Companies like Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing have mastered the "money in politics" game by strategically contributing to congressional campaigns and thus ensuring that lawmakers are willing to rubber stamp their endless piggy bank year after year. These companies also embed production facilities in congressional districts around the US to ensure that lawmakers fear constituent backlash if they support Pentagon cuts. 

Marketing the military as a job machine masks its costly excesses, a strategy that has largely worked, even though "defense" spending is the worst way to create jobs. Research demonstrates that every federal million dollars spent on green infrastructure, healthcare and education can employ far more people than the same money spent on weapons production. Thankfully, there's good reason to believe the tides are turning.

A growing national movement has put unchecked militarism in the national hot seat. Voters and debate moderators alike challenged Democratic presidential candidates to articulate specific military budget cuts during the primary. Former candidates Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang and Tom Steyer delivered, proposing that billions of the budget be cut away to pay for Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, an infrastructure fund, and education investments, respectively. 

That momentum carried into the halls of Congress, as both the House of Representatives and the Senate took unprecedented votes on a joint proposal by Senator Sanders and Reps. Mark Pocan and Barbara Lee to cut and reinvest 10% of the US military budget into the needs of distressed and low-income communities. Although the propositions didn't pass, they were the first votes for significant Pentagon spending cuts in recent decades. An unprecedented 93 House members and 23 senators voted "yes" to cuts, and there's every reason to expect that number to rise in future years.

Regardless of what's next, this vote demonstrated that the public is losing its patience with politicians who are wedded to defense contractor interests. An analysis revealed that Democrats who voted "no" on cutting the budget by the modest 10% — a reduction that would've simply returned the budget to approximately 2018 levels — received 3.4 times more in defense contractor contributions than lawmakers who voted "yes".

Constituents are taking note, and they're not pleased. When polled in advance of the Sanders-Pocan-Lee vote, US voters supported a 10% cut to the Pentagon budget by a 2 to 1 margin, favoring reallocations towards social programming and public health instead.

Similarly, a report released this January revealed that American voters do not actually favor unnecessary Pentagon spending, regardless of whether or not it is channeled back to their own districts. Respondents rejected that premise by a whopping 73% to 13% margin, preferring instead that workers in their district transition to new sectors via short-term re-skilling. By this token, much of what we claim to "know" about the military-industrial complex is a myth.

Congress is now aware that they will be held to task for their practice of writing blank checks to the Pentagon and its beneficiaries. It's a shift that fundamentally changes the game. We're at the beginning of a new era where endless militarism will no longer go unchecked by the American public. Good.

Savannah Wooten is an activist and nonprofit professional working at the intersection of peace-building, anti-militarism, and human rights. She is currently the Campaign Coordinator of the People Over Pentagon campaign at Public Citizen, where she advocates to reduce military spending and reinvest in domestic and human needs priorities.

• Former National Security Adviser John Bolton blasted President Donald Trump for his response to the coronavirus outbreak, calling it "a tragedy for Americans."
• "It's just been one mistake after another," Bolton said in an interview with CNN Wednesday. 
• Bolton joins a growing group of critics who are speaking out against the White House's approach to the coronavirus pandemic.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton slammed President Donald Trump for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying that the White House bungled the response, leading to "one mistake after another."

"They've made a complete mess of it, and it's been a tragedy for Americans, those who have died and their families, the economic consequences," Bolton said Wednesday on CNN.

"To this day, the administration does not have a coronavirus strategy. Now, they may yet get the benefit of it. Recent polls apparently show concern with the virus diminishing as a political matter, so they may be able to tough their way through it. But it's just been one mistake after another."

Trump has repeatedly downplayed the severity of the coronavirus, even as health officials appointed by him sang a different tune and warned Americans to employ protective measures. The president at times also dismissed or contradicted guidance from health officials, including White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Trump has also insisted, without concrete evidence, that the coronavirus will "go away" while pushing for schools to reopen despite warnings from health officials that the disease will spread quickly among children if schools reopened too soon. 

The coronavirus has infected more than 5.9 million people nationwide, according to the most recent data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Of that figure, more than 181,000 people have died from it. 

Bolton's comments came amid the Republican National Convention, during which multiple Trump campaign ads and speakers painted a different reality of his administration's response.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Voters who will take to the polls in November to determine whether Trump gets re-elected have indicated they're not satisfied with the way he's handled the pandemic. Only 35% of voters said they approved of his response in a July Quinnipiac University poll. That figure is compared with the overwhelming 62% who said they didn't. 

Meanwhile, Trump's Democratic rival Joe Biden has been using the president's low numbers to buoy his own campaign. Biden remains one of Trump's fiercest critics, using his campaign to position himself as a better leader than Trump. 

"The president keeps telling us the virus is going to disappear," Biden said while accepting the Democratic presidential nomination last week. "He keeps waiting for a miracle. I have news for him: No miracle is coming."

In that same poll, 59% of those surveyed said they thought Biden would do a better job handling the pandemic, compared with just 35% who said the opposite. 

The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• President Trump has turned his anti-TikTok rhetoric into an executive order.
• A ban on TikTok would mean that retailers lose millions of dollars in profit, due to the app's popularity with influencers and advertisements.
• Justin Kline is the Co-founder of Markerly.
• This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

This month, President Trump turned his potential TikTok ban talk into an executive order, banning the popular video sharing app unless it's sold by its Chinese-owned parent company in 90 days. TikTok is not only a part of the zeitgeist—it has emerged as a powerful marketing tool that can generate substantial sales for retailers who commit to the platform and utilize it properly. Simply put, a ban would adversely impact the entire retail industry.

I know what you're thinking. How much spending, from retailers and users, could be taking place on TikTok to warrant such a prediction? Despite launching in 2016, the platform didn't really become an advertiser's jewel until 2019 - it's estimated that the app brought in anywhere between $200 and 300 million in revenue worldwide last year. And it's aiming for $500 million just in the U.S. during 2020.

Retailers can scale their advertising on TikTok, from brand takeovers for $50,000-100,000 to native ad campaigns for a minimum of $500. Not included in TikTok's revenue is the amount brands put toward influencer marketing. Many creatives are compensated directly by brands and pay is scaled based on the number of followers and average engagement that the user has. Further, some brands might choose to compensate influencers with products. For the early adopters of TikTok advertising, the app has proven to be a worthwhile investment in a short amount of time. A few big winners include:

• American Eagle's Aerie brand, which reported a 100% jump in Q2 sales after engaging with a popular TikTok influencer for the #AerieRealPositivity challenge.
• Mattel, which reported a 116% increase in UNO sales from May 2019 to May 2020 after deploying influencers to promote the card game in its #unowhoyouare TikTok campaign this spring.
• Levi, which hired four TikTok influencers to create personalized denim pieces that were promoted via in-feed ads. Product views for these custom pieces doubled during the campaign and Levi's digital business also doubled from last year, now accounting for 15% of its total revenue.

With results like that, it's no wonder that brands would be concerned about a potential ban. We may even see efforts–in a last-ditch attempt–to get their products, branding and slogans in front of users before the app goes dark (not likely in my opinion). If that happens, these brands will be negatively impacted. Sales from loyal TikTokers will taper off—just like the memes and trends found on the app, the attention span of these users is relatively brief, and brands will lose these audiences and their buying power if they are no longer able to serve up frequent branded content on TikTok.

TikTok users will (perhaps begrudgingly) migrate to other platforms such as Snapchat and YouTube in search of comparable video content if a ban occurs. Social platforms like Instagram and Facebook are familiar to most TikTok users, and useful for advertising and marketing in their own right. 

But the reality is, they cannot match the authenticity and freshness of TikTok and this will prove to be a crucial missing link for turning posts and engagements into retail sales. If you thought things couldn't get even more interesting, Instagram recently launched Reels, a TikTok copycat.

Despite having immediate access to Instagram's user base, Reels will most likely not be a viable alternative to TikTok for brands and creatives. Even in the event of a ban, loyal TikTok users will not be able to find the same type of organic content and energy that the TikTok platform embodies.

While Reels has the short video concept, it's lacking what users like the most about TikTok: a highly engaged user base, a fresh user interface, video filters galore, an unprecedented music library, staff that is highly passionate and communicative, and a feed that hasn't been bastardized in an effort to squeeze out more ad dollars.

TikTok makes you want to keep scrolling to see what's out there, while Instagram's Reels requires that you seek out content by searching. Plain and simple, Reels will not be a substitute in the event of a potential TikTok ban. We can, however, anticipate that users turn to it more than other options, such as Facebook and Snapchat. 

Brands will also be less likely to put all of their eggs into a new TikTok-less basket, as there is no adequate replacement for TikTok. Traditional social ads, sponsored content and user activations on these networks won't grab users in quite the same way. Competitors will surely jump to create similar offerings in the wake of a ban, but they'll likely be met with skepticism.

If Generation Z and Millennial users aren't as compelled by the organic content found on Facebook and Instagram, they'll likely feel uninspired with branded posts. Even if a contender for TikTok emerges, the most nimble brands may find themselves pouring time and money into a platform that will not yield the same ROI as TikTok.

But enough about the brands! Social media influencers are now a part of an established industry and economy in their own right. Influencers exist on all platforms these days, but those who got their start and made a name for themselves on TikTok will be more impacted by a ban than brands.

Influencers based in the US will lose an entire revenue source if they lose access to TikTok. Even international influencers who are spared could stand to lose millions of US followers (and US-based brand partnerships).  For the few influencers that remain, it might not be possible to survive on sponsorships from international brands alone.

In order to keep their corner of the market afloat, TikTok influencers will have no choice but to take to other platforms and attempt to rebuild their followerships. Those who find themselves on a new platform with little to show for themselves beyond their TikTok history will have a hard time winning back brand partners and finding new channels of revenue. Plus, they'll have to find new ways to engage their audiences, since they'll be working with less video creation functionality on other platforms.   

At a time when some brands are boycotting Facebook and its subsidiaries – or being otherwise cautious with advertising budgets – TikTok has become a beacon of hope for retailers willing to take a risk on a nascent platform that delivers fast and powerful results. A ban of the app would cut brands off from hundreds of millions of potential shoppers, creating a ripple effect on advertising budgets and influencer incomes that could shake up the retail industry as a whole.

Justin Kline is Co-founder of Markerly, an influencer marketing technology partner and platform working with some of the largest consumer brands in the world.

• The fitness industry has changed dramatically during the pandemic, as the coronavirus outbreak has temporarily shuttered gyms and prompted Americans to find creative ways to stay fit.
• While some Americans are taking advantage of the great outdoors to get their blood pumping, others are shelling out on at-home fitness equipment, prompting shortages of everything from dumbbells to Peloton bikes. 
• We took a closer look at 12 of the biggest trends impacting the fitness industry during the pandemic. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

In an effort to stay fit and sane in these trying times, Americans have become especially innovative when it comes to finding ways to exercise during the pandemic. 

With quarantines and stay-at-home mandates prompting temporally closures at many gym chains and fitness boutiques around the country, Americans have turned to new ways to get their blood pumping. Some are equipping their own at-home studios with Peloton bikes and NordicTrack treadmills, leading to massive sales booms and weeks-long back orders, while others are unfurling their yoga mats and queuing up virtual streaming classes from their favorite instructors. 

In areas where gyms have started to slowly reopen to the public, companies are enforcing new policies including mandating masks, reducing capacity, and enhancing sanitizing, while others are ignoring protocols altogether and defying state mandates at "speakeasy gyms."

We took a closer look at some of the biggest trends in fitness as the pandemic continues on. 

Dumbbells are impossible to find ...

In addition to hard-to-find items like toilet paper and Clorox wipes during the pandemic, dumbbells have been an unexpected addition to the list. Like most at-home-fitness items, demand for dumbbells has increased dramatically in recent months, leaving sellers in short supply and Americans without free weights. 

According to Vox, part of the shortage has to do with supply chain delays from early shutdowns in China, where 95% of dumbbells are manufactured. The dearth of the weights was compounded by lack of inventory from sellers, like Dick's, Target, and Amazon, that usually stock up on fitness products at the beginning of the year and were, of course, unable to predict the pandemic-related surge. 

... and Peloton bikes are in short supply, too.

Demand for Peloton has skyrocketed during the pandemic, so much so that the company has struggled to keep up as quarantined Americans clamor for the stationary bikes. In the first quarter of 2020, sales increased by 66% while subscribers to the Peloton app increased by 94%, Business Insider's Mary Hanbury reported. 

However, those looking to get their hands on a Peloton before winter sets in should place an order sooner rather than later — the bikes are currently on weeks-long backorder, even after the company announced it was increasing production in June. 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, outdoor bicycle sales have also surged.

Americans were hard-pressed to find bicycles early in the pandemic, as heavy demand led to wide-scale shortages around the country. Sales at bike shops saw record levels, with some increasing by nearly 600%, Business Insider's Jessica Snouwaert reported. 

At-home fitness equipment across the board is experiencing massive growth.

With gyms shuttered, consumers began to buy at-home fitness en masse to create their own fitness centers at home. In addition to skyrocketing growth of Peloton bikes, companies like NordicTrack and Nautilus that specialize in products like treadmills and rowing machines have reported record sales. 

Colleen Logan, vice president of marketing at Icon Health & Fitness, the parent company of NordicTrack, told Vox that the company experienced "crazy" demand, with sales increasing by 600% in May.  

While some gyms have reopened across the country, members are required to adhere to new strict safety protocols.

Though gyms have slowly started to reopen across the country, they're not the same fitness centers we once knew them to be. Many companies are enforcing strict social distancing and safety protocols, including limiting capacity, requiring the use of masks, and taking the temperature of gymgoers before entering the facility. 

Other gymgoers are eschewing safety altogether and attending secret gyms.

In regions where gyms are still prohibited from opening, some gym owners have covertly started opening their doors on the sly in defiance of state policies. According to NPR's Planet Money, the "speakeasy gyms" are part of a growing culture of the "COVID-19 Prohibition era," and many of these secret gymgoers are not adhering to protocols like social distancing. 

"The longer gym shutdowns last during the COVID-19 prohibition era, the more likely people will evade them," NPR's Greg Rosalsky wrote in a recent Planet Money newsletter. "And keep in mind it's summer. Come this fall and winter, millions of workout fiends in cold climates could have fewer legal options to exercise. Speakeasy gyms could have an even greater demand."

Fitness app use has never been higher, particularly for companies like Strava.

According to findings from Sensor Tower, fitness app downloads increased by 47% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2020, reaching a total of 656 million health and fitness apps downloaded during the period.

The top growing app was Strava, which Sensor Tower found had a "particularly sharp rise" with a record 3.4 million users in May, an uptick of 179.2% from January 2020. 

Americans are staying fit with virtual classes at home in their living rooms ...

Many popular boutique fitness chains ranging from Rumble to CorePower Yoga have taken their classes online, offering some classes for free to stream directly from home, and other classes at a premium.

... while others are finding new, creative ways to conduct fitness classes outside ...

In addition to hosting virtual classes, personal trainers have started to convene small groups for socially distant outdoor fitness classes in an effort to keep the blood pumping and still make an extra buck. 

 

 

... including exercising in bubbles ...

Some are even getting extra creative with the outdoor fitness trend, including exercising in socially distant bubbles. 

 

 

... and good old-fashioned activities like running.

Despite early dispute over whether running outside was permissible during the pandemic — and if it was best to be done with or without a mask — Americans are dusting off their running shoes and hitting the pavement during the pandemic. 

Among fitness buffs and couch potatoes alike, athletic apparel and athleisure sales are booming.

With offices shuttered and many Americans working remotely, they've swapped out their work attire for comfortable clothes, including athleisure and athletic apparel which has seen a significant boom in sales in recent months. A recent report by the consumer intelligence platform CivicScience found that 20% of American adults have purchased leisurewear since the beginning of the outbreak.