B (2:13)

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Maybe Its return on ad spend in LinkedIn ads generates the highest B2B. That's business to business. Roas of all online ad networks, they

B (2:23)

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B (2:35)

Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com/mbd. That's LinkedIn.com/mbD. Terms and conditions may apply. Let's begin at New York's LaGuardia Airport where tragedy struck overnight. An Air Canada plane that had just landed from Montreal collided with a fire truck on a run lga, killing the pilot and co pilot and injuring two people who were in the truck. No major injuries were reported among the 72 passengers, according to CNN and the airport will remain closed until 2pm Monday. This is a developing story so we don't know many details yet, but the collision comes at a time when air travelers all over the country are dealing with security line chaos due to the partial government shutdown. TSA agents who aren't being paid have been increasingly not showing up to work because they have to take on other jobs to pay the bills, leading to hours long security lines that sometime extend outside of airport terminal buildings. In a controversial effort to help move the lines along yesterday, the Trump administration said it would be deploying ICE officers to 14 US airports starting today. The idea is to have the ICE agents conduct tasks that free up TSA workers to focus on getting passengers through security checkpoints. Yeah, right.

C (3:50)

As of right now, it looks like Atlanta is going to be the first place where ICE agents are going to be deployed to help with things like crowd management. But America's largest federal employee union says ICE agents are are unqualified to replace TSA agents. They said in a statement TSA officers spend months learning to detect explosives, weapons and threats specifically designed to evade detection at checkpoints, stills that require specialized instruction. That's been the general, you know, pushback here to deploying ICE agents. They are not trained for the situation into which they are entering, which, you know, could make it worse in some scenarios.

B (4:23)

Yeah. A lot of TSA agents that were interviewed by major outlets said they this is a distraction. What we really need to happen is a funding deal to get TSA workers paid. The big date to note is March 27th. That is Friday. That is the date that TSA agents will miss their second full paycheck. They missed the first one on March 13th. And people in the industry say that if TSA workers don't get paid for it for the second time. They'll be going without a month without pay. And at this point they will just leave to take other jobs. And the long security lines that you're seeing all over social media will only get worse.

C (4:57)

Well, the other thing to note about March 27th is that's when Congress has a scheduled two week recess. So if Congress leaves and there's no deal in place, that is when, you know, you start stretching on more than the than a month without a paycheck. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he would cancel the coming Senate recess if the two sides cannot reach a deal. So I guess that is something that is looking positive. But right now the two sides still seem pretty far apart.

B (5:23)

Meanwhile, Elon Musk jumped into the fray. On Saturday, he posted on X that he would pay to TSA workers salaries, which would be, you know, a rounding error for his overall net worth. It's very unclear how this would happen or what mechanism by which Elon Musk would pay for these salaries, but he did sort of point out and it shows how this is very top of mind for people that Elon Musk is looking, you know, he never has to fly through an airport terminal, but he's looking at what's going on and saying, I want to help.

C (5:51)

Yeah, it would be $40 million a week to cover the entire officer salaries of the tsa, which, you know, sounds like a lot. But again, Elon's net worth, I checked of this morning, $850 billion. So yes, he could afford it.

B (6:03)

Moving on. The war in Iran is spiraling into a global economic crisis that experts say markets and politicians are vastly underestimating. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the most important shipping chokepoint in the world, combined with heavy damage to energy infrastructure in the Middle east, has upended daily life for hundreds of millions halfway across Earth and threatens to become much worse before it gets better. Yes, oil is being disrupted, causing gas prices to skyrocket. But also impacted are key raw materials like sulfur, helium and petro chemicals. And so a swath of industries are at risk of becoming collateral damage, from farming to chip making to pharmaceuticals to aviation. On Friday, United Airlines delivered the oh, snap moment that brought to mind March 2020. In a memo to employees, CEO Scott Kirby said that the airline is cutting 5 percentage points off this year's capacity in response to a surge in jet fuel prices, which have more than doubled since the war began. Kirby said United is preparing for a scenario in which oil rises up to $175 a barrel and stays above 100 through the 2027. Should that happen, United's annual fuel bill would come to $11 billion, which is more than double United's profits in its best year ever. But these are the kinds of business decisions that need to be made when you're facing what the head of the International Energy Agency called the greatest threat to global energy in history. At least 39 oil refineries, natural gas fields and other energy sites across nine countries have been hit during the war so far. Damage that could take years to repair. Even if the war were to end today, experts say it's going to leave a lasting imprint on the and it's not going to end today. Maybe it'll only escalate. On Saturday, Trump gave Iran a 48 hour ultimatum to reopen the strait or else the US would destroy Iran's power plants. Iran replied it would retaliate with more strikes on key infrastructure sites in the region. Toby, the thing I keep seeing over and over from insiders is no one is internalizing how bad this could get.

C (7:56)

Yeah. In the midst of all of that, the US Is easing its own sanctions on Iran because right now they're doing the math and they say they actually want to cool oil prices more so than they want a regime change at this point. Treasury Secretary Scott percent said on Friday that the easing of sanctions would only be temporary and narrowly tailored. But these are sanctions, you know, dating back to the 80s at this point. But what they want to do is bring more oil onto the market. The aim is to bring approximately 140 million barrels of oil to global markets. The issue is, is that that translates to around $14 billion in revenue for Tehran. So a lot of people have criticized this move, saying the US is essentially funding a war against itself right now because, you know, the energy crisis has gotten so bad.

B (8:40)

Yeah. Richard Haass, who's the longtime president of the Council of Foreign Relations, talked about the easing of sanctions. He said the oil the US Is allowing Iran to sell is too small to stabilize energy markets, but it is large enough to help Iran fight the war and raise its price for ending it. He called it misguided. Meanwhile, the ripple effects of this war are echoing across the world, specifically in Southeast Asia and East Asia. 80% of the crude oil passing through the Strait ends up in the Pacific. And what you're seeing there is EV dealerships are being absolutely overrun. Byd, which is a Chinese electric vehicle company, the biggest in the world. Vinfast is a the Vietnamese EV company dealers and in Hanoi and Manila and in and in China are saying we have never seen demand like this for a while because high, high gas prices are translating to people wanting to switch over to EVs and hybrids.

C (9:31)

Yeah. In Laos, government agencies are actually slashing EV reg seas by 30% and raising them by the same amount for gas cars. So they are actively trying to disincentivize purchase of gas powered vehicles amidst this massive energy crunch. Also, we've talked a lot about oil, but there's other natural resources that are under pressure right now. Helium is a big one. Qatar supplies a third of the world's helium. We talked about this last week. Helium is produced at Ras Lafan, the biggest liquefied natural gas processing plant. A byproduct of processing natural gas is finding helium. So helium is very important for not just, you know, your birthday party balloons. It is essential in the chip making and chip fabrication process. They you need it to produce, you know, the cutting edge chips that are powering much of the world economy right now. It's used to cool wafers. So that is a big choke point. In addition to oil, if helium is very difficult to, you know, produce, you can't produce it. It's a naturally found element. So that's something to just keep in the back of your mind that no viable replacement for this essential part of kind of like lubricating the global economy.

B (10:39)

Right. I mean so much of the global economy is occurring right now or a lot of the growth is occurring in South Korea which makes the memory chips that make AI possible as well as Taiwan where TSMC is the biggest chipmaking company on earth. And all of those things go into data centers. Data centers are powered by natural gas. Close to 75% of onsite power for data centers is powered by natural gas. Well right now Qatar, which has which exports 20% of all the world's natural gas is can't do that because they, their infrastructure is hit and the Strait of Hormuz is closed. So from helium to sulfur, which is used for chip chip cleaning, it's also integral in the process. Half of global seaborne sulfur comes from the strait. So down the line from all these industries are being impacted by these secondary consequences of closing the Strait of Hormuz, of not getting liquefied natural gas to the places it needs it. And think about what is powering the global economy right now, data centers and AI so if this industry has to halt production or slows down, I mean a lot of dominoes can fall after that.

C (11:41)

And it feels like the market finally woke up to this fact, The S&P 500 has fallen for four straight weeks now. Gold has lost about 25% of its value since hitting a record high. It is the worst four week trading period for, you know, the S&P 500 since April 2025. So it does look like, you know, people's eyes have finally been open, that this conflict is stretching on longer than maybe anticipated. Moving on. We talk a lot about AI disrupting white collar work, but it's coming for cowboys jobs to. A startup in New Zealand called Halter is strapping AI enabled collars onto cattle, which let ranchers create a virtual fence around their herd. It's basically find my iPhone for cows. Farmers can monitor their cows, check health indicators, and even herd them remotely using vibrations and audio cues from their collars. The business pulled in $100 million in revenue last year and attracted the attention of Peter Thiel's Founders fund, which is leading a round that values halter had over $2 billion. The pastor isn't the only place AI has weaseled its way into the beef supply chain. Cargill, one of the biggest beef processors in the world, is using an AI system called Carvey that uses computer vision to spot tiny flecks of meat left clinging to the bone as carcasses move down the line. Early trials show plants are getting up to a half a percent more meat per animal. And at the scale Cargill operates, every fleck matters. It processes around 11 billion pounds of beef a year. That half a percent translates to roughly 55 million extra pounds of meat, worth about $200 million annually. Neal, we got algorithms making ranchers far more efficient. Sounds like a horribly boring Yellowstone plotline, but good for business.

B (13:22)

I don't think it's boring. I thought you're going to say it's coming for black and white collared work. So basically what they're doing is putting a souped up oura ring on on cattle. And it's very cool how this works. So they have this system of smart collars, connectivity towers, a mobile app that lets ranchers make virtual fences. You essentially just draw a line on an iPad and the cow through the smart collar. It learns that they can't go past that. And they say that this is actually a huge fix for what? Number one, huge cost efficiencies because they don't have to build actual fencing anymore because they have substituted this with virtual fencing. Halter says that physical fencing fencing costs about $20,000 per mile to install and maintain. They've already created 11,000 miles of virtual fencing so far in the United States, saving an estimated $220 million in fencing costs. Meanwhile, farming. Yes, there is a fear maybe that it'll take over some jobs, but that's not the problem in the ranching industry. Right now. Over half of US ranchers are older than the age of 55, and there's been a huge labor crunch, especially with tighter immigration enforcement. So people are looking at halter and saying that's it's pretty clever use of AI let's put it in cattle.

C (14:30)

And I love this Cargill story too, as well, because supervisors can replay clips on a screen to coach colleagues as well to show them where they left the literal meat on the bone. Imagine, you know, getting showed an instant replay a var of you, you know, carving a cattle carcass and saying, hey, you're, you're leaving some flex on the bone here. But especially as the US Market is kind of seeing a supply crunch when it comes to beef, every little fleck matters. We've said this a couple of times. The US cattle herd has shrunk to its smallest level in 75 years. So there absolutely is a need and a demand for more meat. If you can, you know, scrape literal flecks of meat off the bone, it does lead to massive, you know, savings.

B (15:12)

Not necessarily a visual I want to have right halter back to New Zealand. This guy is a very interesting story. The founder, Craig Pidget, he is The New Zealand's 2026 Innovator of the year. New Zealand doesn't have that many unicorns, so whenever some guy creates a unicorn,

C (15:28)

they got a lot of cows.

B (15:29)

He is celebrated as a national hero. Very interesting founding story. Grew up on dairy farms with looking at his parents working 100 hours a week as they they moved from farm to farm. They were working really hard. They were moving a lot of very labor intensive. So he came up with this idea. Raised 100 raised at a $1 billion valuation last year from Merry makers Bond Capital, who actually flew their people from San Francisco to Auckland overnight to say we need to invest because there was so much demand to invest. And now he's getting some money from Peter thiel at a $2 billion valuations. So pretty interesting use of AI to put it as big our rings on cattle.

C (16:06)

All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with our winners of the weekend

B (16:12)

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C (16:18)

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Go see the record for yourself at vanguard.com/impact that's vanguard.com/impact all investing is subject to risk. Vanguard Marketing Corporation Distributor this episode is

B (16:47)

brought to you by Apple There is nothing like your first Mac. When I got mine, I was heading into freshman year at the University of Maryland. A lot was uncertain that fall, but I knew I had a dependable sidekick for homework, connecting with other students and devouring blogs about her basketball recruiting class. What about you, Toby?

C (17:03)

For me, it was right as my sister started to get recruited to play soccer in college, I was given the very important task of making her a highlight tape and Imovie was my best friend. She ended up playing at Georgetown, so I'd say it was all worth it.

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C (17:18)

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C (17:45)

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C (18:06)

the Weekend Time the segment where we pick two stories that had a better weekend than sports fans from Iowa. I won the pre show game of who can pick 13 of 16 sweet 16 teams correctly, so I'm up first. And my winner of the weekend is Tesla because though it's disinterested in selling cars, these days, it is interested in selling semis. The company plans to deliver between 5,000 and 15,000 semi trucks by year's end. This has been a long time coming. Tesla first announced the All Electric semi nearly a decade ago, but then Elon got distracted by robots and cyber cabs and the project quietly collected dust. But maybe it was worth the wait because truckers who have gotten a chance to test drive it love it. They called out the centered driving position, faster charging and longer range as positives. As Dakota Shearer, a trucker for IMC Logistics, told the Wall Street Journal that he got stuck on a tight bend his first time out in the truck while towing a 40 foot trailer. Normally that meant hopping out of the cab multiple times to check his position. But the semi centered driving position eliminated the typical right side blind spot that we all know. Plus the screens showed everything around him and he was able to back right out like it never happened. Even if drivers love it, it might be a while before Tesla semis are dominating your road trip truck sightings. Charging infrastructure for long haul truckers isn't quite robust enough yet. Though Tesla promises to open fast charging sites along major freight corridors this summer. Cost could also be an issue. The Journal reports that trucks cost under $300,000, about twice as much as a regular diesel truck. Everybody definitely forgot about the Tesla semi amongst Elon's a million different side projects. But it could be an under the radar winner.

B (19:45)

That this is the thing preventing me from backing up a semi truck is that there's not. I wasn't driving in the center.

C (19:51)

You had the right side blind spot.

B (19:53)

Besides that, I could absolute do it. Now there's a lot to recommend this particular truck, first of all is the charging times. It can charge four times faster than other battery electric vehicles. Could reach a 60% charge in 30 minutes. I know that seems like a long time, but this is a pretty big vehicle and that, that's. It's slower than filling a tank with diesel, but it's pretty good for an ev, an EV truck. It also has a longer range than existing battery electric trucks on the market from like Volvo and Nikola. They have ranges of about 225 miles. One of the semi models can travel 500 miles on a single charge. And that's really key for truckers, especially in Long beach because that's where that's really the hub of EV trucking is Long beach, which is the biggest port in the United States. They want to be able to go to the Inland Empire. They want to go to Vegas on a single round trip. They can't do with the other battery electric vehicles, they can do it with the semi. And that's why this vehicle is in really high demand down there in Southern California.

C (20:48)

I thought an interesting aspect that I hadn't considered was the fact that an electric truck is easier on your body than a diesel truck. Angel Rodriguez, a 56 year old truck driver told the Wall Street Journal that he swapped from a 13 gear diesel truck to an electric semi. And he says it's less stressful because you're not really having to engage the clutch in the stick shift. It's just a smooth acceleration. So that's big. And then other people have talked about too that if you are around diesel trucks, you're inhaling diesel fumes. It's bad for your lungs, it's bad for your hearing, it's very loud. All of these things make a difference to truck drivers and the semi excels at all of them.

B (21:22)

And another tailwind for the semi is we have to go back to the war in Iran because you know, it's spiking gas prices up a dollar so far, but it's spiking diesel prices even more. The average gallon of diesel crossed $5.20 nationwide on Saturday. That's up more than 40% from one month ago. So if you're a truck driver, a trucking company looking at skyrocketing diesel prices, that adds a ton of costs. For every 40% surge in the price of diesel, that results in an overall cost of around 10% for consumers that this gets passed on. So if they're looking for cost savings, they might incre look at electric vehicle trucks. Okay, my winner is bts. The K Pop supergroup made their big comeback after a year's on hiatus, launching a global tour that could rival Taylor Swift's eras. On Friday, BTS dropped their newest album, Arirang, then held a massive free concert on Saturday in the Seoul city center, the first time they've appeared together in nearly four years. Back in 2022, the band went on break at the height of their powers as members completed their mandatory South Korean military service and released solo projects projects. Now they're set to embark on an 82 date more than 30 city tour that will test their pull in a world music culture that's gone through major changes. K pop is still popular, but there's a new sheriff in town, K Pop Demon Hunters, which became the most watched Netflix movie ever. Meanwhile, short form video platforms like Tik Tok, Instagram and YouTube have disrupted the traditional music discovery and album promotion process. But early signs indicate the BTS boys still have it. Just look at what went into the concert logistics. On Saturday, Seoul deployed 7,000 police officers to the performance area, including SWAT units, closed down three subway stations nearby and controlled entry through 31 points with metal metal detectors. South Korea's government even raised its terror alert a notch in preparation. Toby this was the biggest ban in the world four years ago, rewriting the playbook on fandom and serving as an important source of Korean soft power on the global stage. There's a lot riding on this tour.

C (23:22)

There is, and I'm not sure it got off to the best start. Reuters said that a far smaller crowd materialized than what's initially expected because as you said, they brought out all the stops to, you know, handle this massive influx of people. They were expecting up to 260,000, but a local news agency, citing city government estimates, said only 40 to 42,000 people showed up. I did see some other publications published that it was closer to that 250,000 number. So there was definitely a little bit of wiggle room there when it comes to the people who arrived. I think think one of the issues was that they were also airing this on Netflix. So maybe people just stayed home to watch it via Netflix. Another caveat too is that the album airing that you mentioned, 4 million copies on its first day. So clearly there's a lot of pent up demand for BTs.

B (24:10)

And the ticket sales for this concert should be huge. And they're saying it's going to rival Taylor Swift's era's tour, which brought in $2 billion over the course of its run over multiple years. That's the best selling concert tour of all time. Ticket sales for the BTS could amount to 11.4 million per concert only. The only concert tour that did more is Taylor Swift, which brought in $14 million per concert on the Eras tour. But when you're looking at making money in this day and age, it's not as a, as a musical artist, it's not just album sales, it's not just ticket sales, but it's also merch. And industry analysts say that BTS might be smaller than Taylor Swift, maybe globally, but. But they are much better in a merch monetization. So they're going to make so much money in merch. And one example of this is that they sell glow sticks for $64.

C (24:59)

For what?

B (24:59)

A deal to sync to the music of the live shows. And it only works for that particular concert, doesn't work for subsequent concerts. So in addition to paying hundreds of dollars for the concert ticket, a lot of people would pay $64 for this synced up glow stick.

C (25:13)

We should sell per episode glow sticks just, you know, in case you want to follow along at home with whatever,

B (25:19)

we have to learn how to monetize. That's true. And also we're seeing some weird music diplomacy. Remember, we saw that during the ERAS tour where certain Southeast Asian countries were pissed that the other ones got it. Well, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum sent a letter to the president of South Korea asking that Mexico get Mexico City get more than three shows because 1 million Mexican fans had been demanding just 150,000 tickets available. So she's like, can we get more, please?

C (25:46)

I do have a quick bonus winner too, if you'll allow it. Project Hail Mary, the movie based on the book from the Martian author Andy Weir is off to a flying start at the box office. It opened to $80 million domestically, which is the biggest opening for a non franchise movie since Oppenheimer. It also joins a club of only three non franchise movies ever over the past decade to open over 70 million. Neil, we both saw it this weekend giving you your five word review.

B (26:13)

Well, I didn't read the book.

C (26:15)

That's more than five.

B (26:16)

I think people who read the book went into it differently than people who hadn't seen the book. I will say visually, it was very appealing. It was very heartwarming and optimistic view of space travel at a time when most sci fi, most sci fi movies and novels are more dystopian. This was not that. So you left the movie with a little fuzzy feeling.

C (26:34)

The fuzzy feeling that you said was it was a children's movie. You didn't say what the hype was about it, but it was very.

B (26:39)

I gave it a 6.5 out of 10. I did think it was a little. I was like, I just watch a Pixar movie. But even.

C (26:45)

Yeah, you felt good about it though, though.

B (26:46)

All right, it's Monday, so here's what you need to know to stay ahead in the week. Ahead in sports, March Madness rolls on with a sweet 16 and elite eight rounds for the men's and women's college basketball tournaments coming later this week into the weekend. Toby, what were your big takeaways from this past weekend?

C (27:00)

The Big Ten is nasty. Also, I'm very excited for Nebraska Iowa. There's only so much corn to go around. People have been branding it the farm aged in. So excited for that one.

B (27:10)

Plus, after all the excitement of the World Baseball Classic, Major League Baseball starts its regular season on Wednesday. New this year, robot umps. For the first time in league history, players will have the chance to challenge balls and strikes using an automated system of specialized cameras.

C (27:25)

I'm so excited. We need VR. We need, you know, robot arms in every profession. Give me replays of Neil and I pronouncing a word wrong. I'd like to challenge that. Chipotle, Neil.

B (27:36)

All right. And finally tomorrow millennials will relive some of their greatest days with the 20th anniversary of the premiere of Hannah Montana, the Disney Channel series starring Miley Cyrus. Disney plus is airing an hour long special featuring an interview with Miley by Alex Cooper as well as a special concert.

C (27:52)

I'm excited. I didn't know this was coming, but my sister's name is Hannah, so you can imagine Hannah Montana was very big in my household growing up. Miley, she's still got the sauce.

B (28:02)

I'm.

C (28:02)

I will be tuning in.

B (28:03)

All right, that is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful start to the week.

C (28:08)

Week.

B (28:08)

If you'd like to reach us, send an email to Morning Brew daily at Morning Broadcom or DM us on Instagram at Ambi Daily Show. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milian is our supervising producer. Raymond Lu is our senior producer. Our producer is Olivia Graham and our associate producer is Olivia Lake. Ed Lewis is our technical director. We should put a smart collar on hair and makeup. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew.

C (28:31)

Great show, Daniel. Let's run it back tomorrow.

A (28:41)

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