Human-Made Rainfall Paralyzes Dubai & Boeing Whistleblower Testifies

This episode discusses the unexpected heavy rainfall in Dubai possibly linked to cloud seeding, and the ongoing Boeing whistleblower hearings concerning safety defects in aircraft.

1. Dubai's unusual weather may be partially influenced by cloud seeding, highlighting the debates and divisions within the scientific community about weather modification.
2. The Boeing whistleblower hearings exposed serious safety and cultural issues within the company, emphasizing the need for corporate accountability and transparency.
3. Discussions around corporate ethics, employee safety, and environmental interventions are crucial for understanding the broader implications of technological and corporate actions.
4. The episode showcases the importance of infrastructure readiness in urban planning, as evidenced by Dubai's struggles with flooding.
5. It raises questions about the ethical responsibilities of companies engaged in risk-heavy industries like aerospace and environmental management.

1: Introduction to Dubai's Rainfall and Boeing Whistleblower

Brief overview of Dubai's unexpected heavy rainfall and Boeing's whistleblower hearings. Covers the basics of cloud seeding and introduces the key issues at Boeing. Neal Freyman: "Dubai, typically dry, has received ten inches of rain. It's shuttered the second busiest airport in the world." Toby Howell: "Boeing was in the negative headlines as whistleblowers testified on Capitol Hill."

2: Detailed Analysis of Cloud Seeding

Discussion on the scientific, ethical, and practical aspects of cloud seeding as it relates to the rainfall in Dubai. Neal Freyman: "Cloud seeding goes back decades, but it's very experimental." Toby Howell: "There's a lack of regulation around cloud seeding which might distract from necessary environmental shifts."

3: Examination of Boeing's Corporate Culture

Exploration of the cultural and safety issues revealed by the Boeing whistleblower, including the challenges faced by employees in raising safety concerns. Neal Freyman: "The star witness at this hearing was a Boeing vet who warned that the 787 Dreamliner was not safe to fly." Toby Howell: "He was harassed and verbally threatened by his superiors."

1. Stay Informed on Environmental Technologies: Understand the impact of technologies like cloud seeding on your environment.
2. Support Transparency in Corporations: Advocate for and support policies that promote transparency and accountability in businesses.
3. Promote Strong Whistleblower Protections: Encourage the development of strong whistleblower protections in workplaces to ensure safety and integrity.
4. Consider Infrastructure Resilience: Engage in community discussions on improving local infrastructure to withstand extreme weather.
5. Educate on Corporate Ethics: Learn and spread awareness about the importance of ethical practices in all industries, especially in high-risk fields.

Episode 304: Neal and Toby chat about the flooding in Dubai and whether cloud seeding has anything to do with it. Then, the Boeing whistleblower has a dire warning for all its planes. Next, Elon Musk wants his payday and it's up to Tesla shareholders to vote whether he gets it or not. Meanwhile, Biden is taking a hard stance against Chinese steel imports in order to protect the U.S. steel industry. Also, Neal shares his numbers on a bus in Barcelona, coins, and Caitlin Clark’s rookie contract. Lastly, the Atlas robot by Boston Dynamics gets an electric makeover.

People

Sam Salapour

Companies

Boeing, DraftKings, Robinhood

Content Warnings:

None

Neal Freyman
Good morning, brew Daily show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Caitlin Clark's shockingly low WNBA salary has sparked a debate over pay equity in sports. That Dubai has received double its average annual rainfall in a freak storm over the last two days.

Toby Howell
Is cloud seeding to blame? It's Thursday, April 18. Let's ride.

Neal Freyman
Word of advice, kids, do not bet on a sport you play professionally or you're going to have to learn a new sport. Yesterday, the Toronto Raptors John Tay Porter was banned from the NBA forever after the league found that Porter bet on NBA games and limited his participation in at least one game to influence the outcome of a bet. In one of the most striking examples, a bettor found out through Porter that Porter had a health issue going into a game. So the bettor dropped $80,000 on a parlay for Porter to underperform across a variety of metrics. Sure enough, Porter left the game three minutes in with an illness and the bet cashed out $1.1 million.

Well, the bet wasn't paid because DraftKings noticed something was off and flagged to the league. The league has partnerships with more than two dozen betting and gaming companies at this point, so of course this just throws into light the hypocrisy of getting into bed with these gambling companies and then punishing players so severely. It's wild to see how fully the league has embraced gambling at this point. I remember the days when commentators would treat it like almost like Lord Voldemort, where they would allude to Vegas or something like that, about a meaningless three pointer at the end of the game. But now you can just speak about it openly.

Toby Howell
The logos are plastered all around the court, so it is just crazy to see the evolution of how the league has embraced gambling. You think this is too severe of a punishment? I don't think it's too severe as a punishment, but you gotta admit that it's a bit. There is a level of hypocrisy here of if you are taking money from these gambling companies and then you have these players losing their entire livelihoods over it. I'm not saying that John Tay Porter, what he did was correct or anything like that, but it is interesting to see draftkings and FanDuel be the primary sponsors of these leagues, and yet the players still face the ultimate consequences.

Now let's hear a word from our friends over at Robinhood. One of my favorite investing strategies is a set it and forget it approach to the market. I'm great at the set it part, the forget it part a little harder. Oh, you're a chart fiend, Neil. I see you over there checking in daily, but I recommend you check out some of the many tools Robinhood offers to automate your personal long term strategy.

Neal Freyman
Hey, I like to see what's happening, okay, but fine. What are these tools? I'm talking recurring deposits, which automatically move money into your Robinhood account on a schedule. Recurring investments to allocate a certain amount of your money towards buying stocks or ETF's. And you can do it all weekly, bi weekly, monthly, or even further apart.

Toby Howell
Set it and forget it. Neil. Hmm. I'll still be checking my charts, but I like the perspective. Hey you, do you man?

Learn more about the Robinhood app in the App Store or Google Play Store. Disclosers investing is risky and returns are not guaranteed. Recurring investments do not ensure a profit or guarantee against a loss. Not all securities on Robinhood are eligible for recurring investments. Robinhood Financial LLC, member SIPC, is a registered broker dealer.

Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, is dry. It typically receives around 3.9 inches a year of rainfall on average, but in just over 24 hours starting on Monday, about six to ten inches of rain have fallen on the city. It's the heaviest rainfall it's seen in over 75 years, and it's predictably led to chaos. It's shuttered the second busiest airport in the world, Rolls Royces and Aston Martins are floating in the street, and 19 people have died from flooding in neighboring Oman. Amid the chaos, you may have seen people speculating about the origin of this freak weather event, cloud seeding.

Bloomberg News suggested the link as the storms began to rage on Monday. Cloud seeding is this form of weather modification to try to address water security issues. The idea is to release salt or silver iodide into warm weather clouds with the intention of creating larger droplets that will eventually lead to rain. There were reports that seeding planes had been dispatched on Monday before the storms, but the UAE's national Center for Meteorology later denied that neocloud seeding and geoengineering in general are hot button issues that divide the scientific community, and this once in a generation storm has put the practice squarely back in the spotlight. Absolutely.

Neal Freyman
It feels like this is a futuristic technology that they've only been doing for a few years now, very experimental. But if you actually go back through the history of cloud seeding, it goes back decades. It started in the 1940s when farmers, ski resorts, hydropower companies in the United States sent planes and sent particles up into the clouds to induce more precipitation. It's not hard to see why a ski resort might want to do this to induce more snowfall. And they still do it.

I mean, Vail resorts pioneered it, and they have a very robust cloud seeding program. Telluride also does it. Wolf Creek in Colorado, park City in Utah, Alta. So they all have very robust cloud seeding programs back to the UAE. It's very interesting.

There was a little discrepancy because initially they said they did cloud seeding on Sunday and Monday and Tuesday, and then they walked it back a little bit and said, no, we haven't done cloud seeding operations. But at the most, it feels like cloud seeding can only induce a 20% increase in rainfall. So I think the consensus here, after much debate, is that cloud seeding, if it had anything to do with the rainfall, is very minimal. Yeah, minimal. Let's dive into the debate around this practice, though, because you're right, it has been around for a lot, a long time.

Toby Howell
On the one hand, you might think that clean tech and reductions in greenhouse gases aren't happening quickly enough, so no options should be off the table when it, even if it comes to meddling with the weather a little bit. But on the other hand, there's this distinct lack of regulation around cloud seeding. There could be these unforeseen side effects, and it might just be a distraction from the broader shift that we need to make away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy. So there's definitely people, even within the environmental movement, even within, like the clean tech industry, that are very divided on cloud seeding. Because you're also correct, it's a mixed bag on if cloud seeding even works, because especially in flat regions and especially on clouds that aren't close to producing rain anyway, a lot of people think that some city officials may overstate the effect cloud seeding have to show that they are making strides in trying to induce rain in this arid region.

So it's definitely a mixed bag and is splitting the scientific community a little bit. The bigger problem for Dubai is not cloud seeding or the. Or the debate over that. It's really, do you have the infrastructure to handle these floods? Because Dubai is a really way more of a concrete jungle than the United States is.

Neal Freyman
It doesn't see a lot of rainfall. They don't have a lot of permeable surfaces. There's a lot of concrete. The rain, when it comes down and when it comes down heavy, is not going anywhere, which is why you saw the Dubai airport literally underwater. It was a lake.

500 flights were canceled. That's chaos. So many flights go in through Dubai and around the world. So I think Dubai has to address its infrastructure and other, other cities that are going to be seeing more extreme rainfall events or more extreme weather events. You have to have your infrastructure ready to handle these kind of things.

Boeing was in the negative headlines once again as whistleblowers testified on Capitol Hill that the company was knowingly producing planes that had safety defects and retaliated against workers who brought up concerns. The star witness at this hearing was 17 year Boeing vet Sam Salapour, a quality engineer who warned that the 787 Dreamliner was not safe to fly due to gaps where the different pieces of the fuselage came together. He also said that when he raised the issue with his superiors, he was harassed and verbally threatened, and a bolt had been driven through the tire of his car, though it wasn't clear who did it. Another whistleblower at the hearing, a former Boeing manager, went even further, accusing Boeing of a criminal cover up following the door panel blowout of the Alaska Airlines 737 Max in January, the incident that renewed scrutiny over Boeing. For its part, Boeing says that concerns about the 787 are inaccurate and it's fully confident in the plane.

Still, the hearings revealed even more rot in the company's culture than we knew about. Yeah. Salapore has been on a media tour since he came forth with his whistleblowing allegations last week. He jumped on camera for the first time even before the hearings and said that. He said the plane could fall apart and drop to the ground mid flight if the issues are not addressed.

Toby Howell
When he asked if he would put his own family on a 787 right now, he said, right now, I would not. And he reiterated that the company has not addressed these tiny gaps found in multiple planes after they weren't put together correctly. So it's definitely, we're seeing the fallout from, we got those initial claims, now he's going on Capitol Hill, now he's going on tv, and the heat is still being turned up on Boeing. What struck me the most about his testimony was the retribution aspect, the fact that when you raise concerns that his superiors kind of berated him. He said that he had a call with his boss for over 40 minutes where he was lashed by his boss over raising problems.

Neal Freyman
And the ability of whistleblowers and regular employees to come forward with safety issues is a really big part of what makes manufacturing safe. The FAA has developed this whistleblower process for workers at Boeing and other aerospace manufacturers to come forward with issues, because the fear, the, the ability to come forward and not fear retribution by your superiors is a really part of developing that safety culture. So the fact that he said he was harassed and verbally threatened by his superiors is certainly concerning. The other thing that is very concerning, too, is the other whistleblower that you mentioned came forward and said that there's an attitude problem, both at Boeing and the FAA itself. And he said, right now, the attitude is that Boeing dictates to the FAA, not the other way around.

Toby Howell
So you don't want these regulatory agencies being kind of at the mercy of what these big companies are. And certainly right now, it seems like the power balances between those two are off and they should be re corrected so the FAA can monitor Boeing appropriately. When at first you don't succeed, try again. At a shareholder meeting in June. That's the approach Tesla is taking towards getting Elon Musk's historic $56 billion pay package approved.

If you rewind to three months ago, a Delaware court voided Elon's monster pay package that Tesla's board and shareholders had granted him back in 2018. The judge described it as deeply flawed, saying the company hadn't properly disclosed the package to shareholders. Not Elon wielded far too much control over the board. But yesterday, Tesla said it would go to bat again for the package and is bringing it to a shareholder vote at its annual meeting in June. Since the package is entirely made up of stock options, it's only worth $47 billion.

Now, given Tesla's recent struggles, and given that underperformance, Musk might be facing an uphill battle in his attempt to get rewarded with the richest pay package in us corporate history. So as shareholder meetings go, Tesla's June 1 is up there with the most dramatic, because everything from a happy Musk to a Tesla Musk breakup is on the cards. Yeah, seriously. But Tesla does think that it has the support for this pay package needed to go back to that particular vote and have it go through. They did originally, back in 2018.

Neal Freyman
They've got 73% of non Musk shareholders to approve the plan. They put a lot of evidence forward that a lot of the shareholders still support the fact that Musk should be paid tens of billions of dollars for bringing Tesla from a $50 billion valuation to a $500 billion valuation. Says it has four of the largest institutional shareholders in the company on board. That includes t row price, which. Which they said urged Tesla after that pay package was voided, to go back and hold another vote because they want Elon to be paid this amount for hitting these particular benchmarks for Tesla.

Toby Howell
Right. And you might be thinking, why is it going to bat for this particular pay package? Why not just throw it out and start again anew? But they are going the route of ratification because trying to get the previous deal improved instead of trying to negotiate a new package with Musk honestly might be the play, because you're going to have to pay them a similar magnitude package no matter what. So you might as well just use the one that's already been seen to have support from shareholders rather than trying to craft a new agreement where MusK might have even more leverage over the company at this current moment.

But it's actually a very interesting moment for Tesla right now because Elon has publicly said, I want more control of the company. I want to get up to that 25% ownership threshold, so we might see some fireworks come june where elon just says, listen, you're not. You guys are putting me through this Rigmarole. I've been basically working for free. I haven't exercised hardly any of the stock options I'm legally allowed to.

He might just. I'm bleeding money from x, right? Yeah. He's spending a lot of money on his social media side project, so I could totally see this whole thing blowing up in Tesla's face. Or maybe they just voted through.

Neal Freyman
Yeah, we'll see. It should be pretty dramatic. Also, that's not the only vote that's happening at this meeting. Tesla will also vote to reincorporate from Delaware to Texas. Elon Musk, after that Delaware decision to void his pay package, really kind of went after.

Yeah, went ham on Delaware and said, I don't want to incorporate in you anymore, and I want to move all of my companies to Nevada or Texas. So it feels like Tesla, Tesla may also vote to shift its place of incorporation. President Biden and his rival Donald Trump, don't have a lot in common, but they do agree on one thing. Steel coming from China should face higher tariffs. In a speech in Pittsburgh, home of the Steelers, Biden called on the US trade representative to more than triple some tariffs on steel and aluminum products coming from China.

In this proposal, certain goods that have tariffs of 7.5%, or none at all could face a 25% tax to enter the US market. The call for higher tariffs is in line with Biden's aggressive push to get that made in America tag on more products. And that push has come with a hard line against China. In recent weeks, officials across the west, not just the US, have accused Beijing of dumping its extra exports into foreign markets at low costs, hurting local manufacturers who can't compete on price. But as Biden puts up trade barriers, economists have concerned that these protectionist policies may come at a cost of free market ideals and global economic growth.

Toby Howell
Yeah, Biden talked about this while on the visit to a swing state. He's definitely on the campaign trail right now, rolling out these protectionist steps against Beijing. There's also tariffs that he wants to include against electric vehicles, batteries, solar products, which you've heard us talk about on the show in the past. It is interesting, though, because technically the 7.5% tariffs have worked a little bit. In 2023, steel imports from China were down 8.2% from 2022.

And if you look at the broad import volume that the US does by comparison, we don't actually import that much steel from China, 598,000 tons in 2023. Compare that to imports from Canada, 6.9 million tons. Imports from Mexico, 4.2 million tons. But then if you dig a layer deeper, a lot of people think that chinese companies are setting up shop in Mexico, avoiding those tariffs and importing through Mexico. So the whole import scene for steel is particularly interesting, and the tariffs that are being applied to it will only make only constrain it even more.

Up next, you better get excited because my favorite time of the week is here. Neil's numbers.

Neal Freyman
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Toby Howell
Just go to hear.com brew to learn more. That's hear.com brew. Support for today's show comes from Deloitte. If your company is like most, your future depends in part on technology. Yes, that means choosing the right technology and adopting it quickly.

Neal Freyman
But that isn't enough to gain advantage. Your technology needs to be as outcome focused as you. That means helping your people be more efficient and more inventive, reducing cost and creating revenue streams, growing your customer base and building trust. Deloitte combines world class business knowledge with a full command of technology to help their clients do more than choose cloud or adopt AI, they help them create advantage from it. Read case studies@deloitte.com.

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Welcome to Neil's numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will give you so much cognitive energy, you won't need any coffee this morning. My first number is 116, which is the name of a bus route in Barcelona that has vanished from the map but still exists. Here's the story. The residents of a Barcelona neighborhood have been fetching for years that tourists are overcrowding a bus that goes to a famous park, the citys second most popular attraction. Complaining that not even elderly people with canes can find a seat on the bus, they decided to do something about it.

The city council asked Google and Apple to remove the bus route from their map apps, and the companies agreed. So now the bus only exists for those who know about it. Barcelona literally wiping itself off the map is perhaps the most extreme example yet of the city trying to curb over tourism. Barcelona received over 20 million visitors in 2019, compared to its population of 1.6 million. COVID shrank that number.

But tourists are trickling back, and Barcelona does not want to return to being a playground for american study abroad students again. I feel like Barcelona may have Barbra Streisand themselves. Remember, the streisand effect is when you attempt to conceal something and you end up drawing more attention to it. Barbara famously did that. There was this her.

Toby Howell
She wanted her house deleted from this series of coastal photographs. She pressed legal action against a photo photographer, and it led to a huge increase in people looking at her house. I feel like Barcelona just did this on the 116 bus route because now it's in the news, we're talking about it, and people are still gonna know about it, even though they deleted it. From what I understand, this bus was already extremely crowded. It was so packed.

Neal Freyman
There are a ton of tourists that go to Barcelona. So maybe you're right at the margin. I know a lot of people who listen to this are going to Barcelona. But no, it seems from what I gathered about this bus and talked to people who have been on it and head to this park, it is just bursting with people. And it makes sense that these people, that the people who live there are pushing back because they can't just have any peace and quiet in their neighborhood.

Toby Howell
And this is not the first step we've seen taken towards over tourism at all. I mean, we talked about a Vermont town that essentially closed down the town during leaf season because of overcrowding. There's been staircases removed in Hawaii, in popular photography spots. So this is not the end of the push against over tourism that these countries are. Speaker one.

Neal Freyman
And it's especially happening in Barcelona. They voted against expanding their airport because they don't want more people coming. And some of the steps that they've taken is on tours of the city. You can no longer have a megaphone, and you have to put in a headphone and speak into a microphone there. All right, my second number is $68 million, which is the amount of change that Americans throw away every year.

The source of that stat is a firm named Reworld, and it would know this Pennsylvania company processes waste and has collected at least $10 million worth of coins from your trash cans. According to the Wall Street Journal, the critics of coins, all of this change is cause for change. The US quarter had roughly the same buying power in 1980 that a dollar has today, and pennies cost about three times their value to make. So at the very least, some argue that the US should follow the lead of Canada, New Zealand, and Australia and remove our $0.01 pieces from circulation because no one is using them. Speaker one.

Toby Howell
Yeah, they're as good as junk for a lot of people. I mean, buses, laundromats, toll booths, these places that historically you need to change for. They all take credit or debit cards at this point. And you're right, like, the penny doesn't make sense economically. TSA also finds a ton of coins at checkpoints every year.

So people are not using their change as a once word. And honestly, it made me extremely jealous that I never thought about a waste removal process where you process the amount of coins you find because they're making us. It's a small part of their overall revenue, but they're making a significant amount of money off this. Did you. Did you ever do this?

Neal Freyman
Like, I had a small, similar operation with my grandma. We'd all sit together at the table, go through the coins that we had left in our piggy bank, roll them up, and then take them to the bank. It'd be like $50 to $60. It was a nice little, nice little gift. It's fun.

Toby Howell
The personal coin counter. You feel wealthy. That's the first time you feel wealthy is putting it all, having them sort and making those little rolls. All right, my last number is $76,535, which is what Caitlin Clark will make in her first year playing for the Indiana fever in the WNBA. Not exactly a salary fit for a transformative basketball superstar, right?

Neal Freyman
Doesn't seem so. It's less than 1% of the 12 million her number one draft pick counterpart in the NBA, Victor Wenbanyama, will make this season playing for the San Antonio spurs. This huge pay gap has sparked loads of debate this week, with even President Biden weighing in that women athletes are not paid their fair share. There are several reasons why salaries for WNBA players are so much smaller than what NBA players make. First of all, the WNBA brings in a tiny amount of revenue compared to the NBA, $200 million versus 10 billion each year.

But even so, the way the collective bargaining agreements work, WNBA players receive a far less share of league revenue than the men who get 50% of all ticket sales and broadcasting rights. Toby Caitlin Clark making 70k something feels off. Yeah, something definitely feels off. And you're right. You can always point to the amount of revenue that each league respectively brings in.

Toby Howell
But this, the collective bargaining agreements are set up differently. The women do receive less of the overall total pie. So that's what they've been advocating for four years, is like, we just want to have the same part, piece of the pie that the men get. We know our pie is smaller, although it certainly is going to break. It's getting bigger.

The next collective bargaining agreement can be agreed upon in the 2025 season, and I feel like we're going to see a much different landscape. All these stars are entering the league. Caitlin Clark is entering the league, so hopefully it changes when it comes up for negotiation again. Yeah, and it all ties back to how much money they get on their tv deals because that is the lion's share of the revenue for these leagues. The WNBA currently brings in $60 million a season from their tv contracts with ESPN, CB's, et cetera.

Neal Freyman
The NBA makes $2.7 billion annually from their tv contracts. So that's a such a huge discrepancy. If viewership goes up for the NBA, which were WNBA, which we're all expecting it to, then the league can go back to the table with these media networks and say, hey, you have to pay us a lot more because we're bringing a lot more eyeballs. It's a good thing robots don't get jealous, or else Boston Dynamics would have a very awkward situation on its hands. One day after retiring its famous hydraulic powered humanoid robot named Atlas, it revealed its new and improved humanoid robot that trades clunky hydraulics for electric power.

Toby Howell
Also named Atlas. You probably know Boston Dynamics for a variety of videos that have gone viral over the years of Atlas making its way through obstacle courses, picking up boxes, or even dancing. It was originally conceived as more of a research project to help with search and rescue efforts, but this new atlas is designed for real world applications. Gone is the top heavy torso, bowed legs, and bulky armor from the previous version. The new electric version has some smoother movements we've seen out of other robots.

And though it has a gentle humanoid look to it, Atlas is certainly not fully building it in the image of humans. It can do things like spin its head, torso and legs 180 degrees, as it showed off in a rather uncanny demo video. Neil, what do you make of the new and improved atlas? I was wondering what the use case was like. What is this thing going to do?

Neal Freyman
What is the point of this? They have to sell it eventually. They're spending tens of millions of dollars developing. What is this thing eventually going to do? Well, I think for that, all you have to do is look at who owns Boston Dynamics, who bought it in 2021 for nearly a billion dollars, and that's Hyundai.

And it looks like these robots, these humanoid robots, are going to replace humans, or aim to replace humans on the assembly line in auto manufacturing plants. That's why Tesla has developed a humanoid robot. There are other humanoids also working at various plants in BMW and Mercedes, rival robots to what Boston Dynamics is doing. So it looks like one of the first commercial applications of this is going to slot in for carrying heavy, unwieldy things, dangerous jobs in auto plants. One thing that I think is interesting, whenever you see a Boston dynamics video, a lot of them have been for marketing.

Toby Howell
Showing a robot dancing doesn't really show how it can be used in the real world, but this latest video that came out shows the robot getting up from a prone position after it's presumably fallen over or something like that. And that is not just a marketing stunt, because it is very much a problem that if a robot falls over, if it can right itself and not cause production to slow down, that's been an issue that these companies have been trying to solve. And Boston Dynamics, with some interesting uses of physics and force, showed it getting up from a prone position. And so I do think that they are building this robot with productivity in mind, with a real use application, real world application in mind, not just for marketing anymore. Meanwhile, Boston Dynamics has a much more successful, at least from a commercial perspective, robot named Spot.

Neal Freyman
This is a dog robot, and it's been used in a lot of police departments all over the country. There was a record first where a robot dog working for the Massachusetts State Police Department was shot in the line of duty. There was a standoff with this dude in Cape Cod, and they sent spot and several other robots in to not necessarily confront the suspect or the person, but to learn more information. The, the suspect shot spot, and they were saying that spot saved lives. And with the success of that mission, I don't know if you call it a success, but it did lead to the apprehension of this person, then they're going to only use spot more.

So Boston Dynamics has that police dog working really well for it. All right, let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for listening and have a wonderful Thursday. Thursday been a fast week for sure. Don't be a stranger.

Write into our email morningbrew dailybrew.com with love letters, hate mail, thoughtful feedback. We welcome it all. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer.

Producer Isabel Wynn is our technical director. Billy Menino is on audio. Hair and makeup is looking for that bust in Barcelona. Devin Emery is our chief content officer. And our show is a production of Morning Brew.

Toby Howell
Great show. Right now. Let's run it back tomorrow.