AP

Shares of Apple slid Monday as mounting trade war tensions overshadowed the company's upcoming product launches.

The smartphone maker is expected to unveil its next-generation iPhones this Wednesday, at an event in California. Apple could launch three new iPhones, updated iPad Pros, Apple Watches, a new entry-level laptop, a pro-focused Mac mini desktop computer, and new accessories, according to a new report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

He added that Apple's iPhone X successors could be named the iPhone "Xs," "Xs Max," or "Xr."

However, shares dropped as much as 2% in Monday as trade war tensions escalated.

President Donald Trump threatened on Friday to attack China with tariffs on another $267 billion worth of goods.

The proposed tariff could "cover a wide range of Apple products" and lift prices of the Apple Watch and AirPods, the company warned in a letter to the government published on Friday. Both are core product lines for Apple. 

"Because all tariffs ultimately show up as a tax on U.S. consumers, they will increase the cost of Apple products that our customers have come to rely on in their daily lives," said the company.

Last week, dozens of manufacturing companies testified before US Trade Representatives about how Trump's next round of duties against China could affect them. Some showed concerns of layoffs for American people and harm to US economic interests.

Shares of Apple are up 27% this year.

Business Insider

In what has been a pressure-filled year for Tesla, the company's third-quarter performance might be its most important test in 2018.

The company has said that it expects to become consistently profitable beginning in the third quarter and, on Friday, CEO Elon Musk said in an email to employees that was posted on Tesla's website that the third quarter will be the "most amazing quarter in our history." He said in the email that Tesla will build and deliver over double the amount of cars it did in the second quarter, when it built 53,339 and delivered 40,740.

The email came at the end of a week in which the departures of three executives continued the company's high turnover rate among senior employees, and it follows questions about the company's financial health and Musk's decision-making that have persisted for months. A profitable quarter and massive increase in production could re-focus the Tesla narrative around the company's rapid production growth and improving financial prospects. But failing to meet those goals may only increase doubts about the company's long-term potential.

Two current Tesla employees who work in vehicle production at the Fremont factory where the company makes its cars and one former employee who worked at the Fremont factory before leaving the company in August shared diverging opinions with Business Insider on whether the company will fulfill Musk's lofty vision for the third quarter. The former and current employees requested anonymity due to a fear of reprisal from Tesla.

The former employee said Musk's prediction that production and deliveries will more than double was realistic and one current employee said Musk's optimism was reflected among the employee's colleagues.

"I absolutely believe it's possible," the current employee said of Musk's prediction. "There's a positive attitude, at least where I work, to get the numbers up."

But another current employee said Musk was getting ahead of himself.

"That's laughable," the employee said of Musk's prediction. "Whatever goal he's predicting, probably cut that number in half.

"[The Fremont factory] is a dumpster fire! And when he gets on social media or whatever platform he uses he makes everything worse."

Which sentiment comes closer to matching the reality of Tesla's third-quarter performance will go a long way toward determining whether 2018 is viewed as a triumph over adversity or the result of hubris and poor decision-making.

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If there was any doubt that Amazon is increasingly being painted as the biggest villain in American capitalism, it died last week with the introduction of the Stop BEZOS Act.

On September 5, Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (BEZOS) Act. The bill, a clear reference to Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, would create a welfare tax for large employers with workers who receive federal benefits such as food stamps.

Sanders' office singled out Amazon in the press release, citing a report from The New Food Economy that found one in three Amazon workers in Arizona depend on food stamps.

Sanders' office's press release also mentioned Walmart, citing a 2014 report from the grassroots group Americans for Tax Fairness that the retailer costs American tax payers $6.2 billion a year due to workers' reliance on food stamps, Medicaid, and public housing. At the time when the report came out, Walmart called it "inaccurate and misleading," noting that the percentage of Walmart workers who use government benefits is similar to that of other retailers.

To be sure, Sanders' proposed bill would affect Walmart, too. But Amazon was still the focus.

A growing problem

Amazon's reputation woes were put into concrete form when the Reputation Institute issued its annual RepTrak ranking of companies on Thursday. Amazon notably lost the top spot to Barnes & Noble in the retail category.

Among all companies globally, Amazon fell from 18th to 23rd place. It was the top company in the US from 2014 through 2016 but is now 10th.

Many of the listed companies fell in the ranking year-over-year. The Reputation Institute determined its ranking from a survey of 10,000 individuals, saying that it "quantifies the emotional bond stakeholders have with leading companies and how these connections drive supportive behavior."

The company's reputation fell in all categories of reputation, but it was hit especially hard with relation to citizenship — how it gives back to its community — and how it treats its workers.

The haves and have-nots of Amazon

Amazon's threat to small businesses was one of the first strikes against the company in some people's minds. For mom-and-pop businesses, it is easy to feel like a dying breed in the age of Amazon, even as many small companies rely on Amazon for sales.

"Today, millions of small and medium-sized businesses from around the world are selling on Amazon and more than a million of them are based in the US," an Amazon representative told Business Insider in July.

The search for Amazon's new second headquarters, known as HQ2, has helped put a microscope on Amazon's local impact. Skyrocketing housing prices, unrelenting traffic, and overcrowding have inspired residents to dub Seattle "Armageddon." Local businesses have been forced out as prices increase and Amazon's headquarters expands into "Amazonia."

In response to criticism, Amazon has touted its investments in Seattle and how the HQ2 deal could pay off for the city that becomes home to its new headquarters.

An Amazon warehouse. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Perhaps most damning are reports from Amazon workers. While Amazon has been applauded for its impressive benefits, the company has also been plagued with stories of white-collar workers dealing with a brutal working environment in which people cry at their desks after being pushed to their breaking point.

In July, Bezos became the richest man in modern history. As of Monday, he has an estimated net worth of $159.2 billion, according to Forbes.

Warehouse workers have protested long hours and poor working conditions. Employees told Business Insider earlier this year that they were constantly under surveillance while working in Amazon warehouses, with intense targets that don't even allow for bathroom breaks.

"The metrics are brutally aggressive, and most of my colleagues are in a state of constant anxiety that we could be fired at any moment for not meeting metrics," one current US employee said. "Jeff Bezos has become the richest man in the world off the backs of people so desperate for work that we tolerate the abuse."

Amazon defends its working conditions strenuously.

"We encourage anyone to compare our pay and benefits to other retailers," an Amazon representative said in August, noting that the average hourly wage for full-time workers in fulfillment centers was over $15 an hour before overtime. "Amazon is proud to have created over 130,000 new jobs last year alone. These are good jobs with highly competitive pay and full benefits."

Walmart's past problems look a lot like Amazon's current ones

Amazon isn't the only company to face criticism for its CEO's wealth, its ruthlessness in the face of competition, or its treatment of workers. But because it is such a visible company — with the richest CEO — it becomes a target for criticism that could be applied to many retailers.

No journalist has gotten under Tinder's skin quite like Nancy Jo Sales.

In 2015, a story Sales wrote for Vanity Fair that probed the dark side of dating apps and hookup culture — provocatively titled "Tinder and the Dawn of the 'Dating Apocalypse'" — went viral. Tinder was not pleased, to put it mildly. The dating app's official Twitter account had a public meltdown, tweeting at Sales dozens of times in the next 24 hours about the article.

"They attacked the piece," Sales recounted in a recent interview with Business Insider. "They tweeted at me over 30 times. Attacked me personally. Attacked my chops as a reporter." Tinder cofounder Sean Rad even did an interview going after Sales personally, and suggested he had done opposition research on her.

Rad "sent me a private email and he apologized" later on, Sales added, though he declined to do so publicly.

But Sales did not consider the subject of dating apps finished, particularly elements she explored in that article related to the way women are treated on apps like Tinder — "harassing messages, unsolicited nude pictures, and all that," she said. Not by a long shot.

At the time, Sales had also been eager to make her first documentary, and had hired a cameraman to film interviews in tandem with her reporting for a book on American girls and social media (American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers). The way her Vanity Fair article captured the public's (and Tinder's) attention gave her a chance to shift focus to that particularly, and with backing from HBO to turn it into a full-length doc, she began shooting new interviews in the summer of 2016.

The resulting film, "Swiped: Hooking Up in the Digital Age," premieres at 10 p.m. Monday on HBO. And it is bleak.

The first thing that jumps out about "Swiped" is how gifted an interviewer Sales is. Much of the doc revolves around interviews with 18 to 25-year-olds who talk about their experiences using various dating apps. Sales said she wanted broad representation of diverse voices and she certainly succeeds. The interviews veer from sweet to sad to mildly sociopathic — but their defining quality is candor, which is a testament to Sales' technique.

The most effective moments of the doc highlight how the technology that has become central to modern dating has stripped away bits and pieces of people's humanity.

"I was hearing a lot about ghosting and heartbreak," Sales said of her interviews for the film. "People feeling like they weren't being treated as a human being." And it comes through.

But that ends up being the weakest part of the doc as well. Many of the experts interviewed by Sales speak about how rapid the change in dating culture has been since the introduction of apps, and particularly the famous swipe by Tinder in 2012 (Sales even interviews the man who invented the swipe interface, Tinder cofounder Jonathan Badeen).

But in focusing on the change in the dating landscape, "Swiped" sometimes feels like an episode of "Black Mirror." In particular, while there is something undeniably resonant about the experiences of the subjects, you get the sense you are missing out on the ones that are, well, a bit boring.

For instance, the main long-term relationship highlighted in the movie is one in which the couple actually uses Tinder together to find other sexual partners. It is interesting and shows a way some couples continue to use these dating apps, even as their relationship progresses. But it's not exactly prosaic, and when strung together with the other elements of the film, gives the impression that there aren't really people who use dating apps — either effectively or ineffectively — in an undramatic way.

The couple that Tinders together... HBO

But that might simply be the downside of trying to make a compelling movie. It's not an academic study, after all. And to Sales' credit, she is always fair to her subjects, even the dating-app execs who put their foot in their mouths on more than one occasion, and show the twisted way corporations sometimes think about customers.

"This film, it was never something that I had in my mind ever to blame or judge anyone," Sales said. "If it's a critique of anything, it's a critique of corporate culture."

On that note, it succeeds in a way that might leave you more than a little bit depressed.

A new and upcoming iPad Pro could come with a USB-C port instead of Apple's proprietary Lightning port, according to Apple analyst Ming Chi Kuo, who has a great track record with Apple device predictions.

We first saw the report on 9to5Mac.

Apart from adopting a more universal standard, it's not clear exactly why Apple could be giving USB-C ports to its iPad over the traditional Lightning port.

One clear benefit from the change would be the ability to charge the iPad Pro with a USB-C cable, which is becoming more and more ubiquitous with device charging. Namely, Apple's own MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops use USB-C for charging.

Apple

In relation to charging, Kuo predicts that Apple will include an 18-watt charging brick and USB-C cable to charge the upcoming iPad Pro.

An iPad Pro with USB-C could also be a massive step towards iPads that could realistically replace your computer, as per Apple's marketing that claims iPads can replace traditional computers like laptops.

For one, giving USB-C to iPad Pros means users could potentially plug in a much wider variety of devices and accessories than they could with Apple's standard Lightning port.

For example, you might have the option to plug in an external hard drive, which could be enormously useful to professionals with massive photo or video files to edit on apps like Photoshop or iMovie. A music professional could plug in music hardware that they're used to plugging into computers, like MIDI devices, thanks to USB-C.

Apple

Essentially, USB-C could give the iPad Pro a lot more use as a primary standalone device rather than just a tablet that accompanies a computer.

Kuo also predicts that the new iPad Pro will come with the iPhone X's Face ID facial recognition system for unlocking the device and making mobile payments.

That said, these are all rumors, and my examples are purely speculative. We still don't know what Apple's plans are for USB-C on an iPad Pro, assuming that's happening. Kuo has proven to be a reliable source of predictions, but it's still not a guarantee. Whether Apple will announce new iPad Pros during its September 12 event is also uncertain, and possibly unlikely. The company is said to be announcing three new iPhones during its September event, so we might see the iPads coming later during an event in October.

US internet services and tech products have largely failed to catch on in China. The causes are many but those American technologists interested in spotting one of the bigger ones need only stare into a mirror, according to Kai-Fu Lee.

Speaking at the Artificial Intelligence 2018 Conference in San Francisco last week, Lee, a longtime US tech exec working in China, showered all kinds of criticism on the efforts of American tech companies operating in that country.

"American companies tend to treat China as just another market," Lee told conference attendees. "The local team isn't empowered with full resources and ability to build new product suites targeted and customized for local customer needs.

"Secondly because the people who are sent by American companies are professional managers whose next aspirations is to become the senior VP of sales," Lee continued, "they will behave by corporate standards and achieve (the results) that gives them the promotion, and not roll up their sleeves and work 24-7, and fight the competitor."

But the problem with this, according to Lee, is that "everyone else in China is doing that."

He said what this means is "you're going to be a foreigner, who doesn't speak the language, who doesn't work as hard, who doesn't (understand) local customers, who don't get all the resources, who is afraid to make your boss unhappy. So how can that possibly succeed?"

A lot is at stake in China for US companies. The country has a population of 1.4 billion people. The number of Internet users in China is 770 million, more than twice the population of the United States. Income has risen steadily, so China is a rich and growing market that US tech companies have largely failed to penetrate.

Among the top 50 websites in China, only a handful are American, and none are in the top 10.

Just next door in India, another populous country where internet use is growing, the story is much different.

"American companies dominate the internet (in India)," the New York Times wrote last month. "Facebook's WhatsApp is the most popular app on phones. Virtually every smartphone runs on Google's Android system. YouTube is the favorite video platform and Amazon is the No. 2 online retailer."

American companies face tough challenges in China, some involving politics that are largely are out of their control. But US execs operating there can improve their position, said Lee, who has a lot of experience in this area.

Read more: Underneath all the AI hype is the likelihood it threatens the poor, says this former Microsoft and Google exec

After working as a researcher for Apple, Lee helped set up a Microsoft Research division in Beijing. In 2005, he tried to jump to Google but Microsoft sued to stop him, citing a non-compete clause in his contract.

Eventually, Lee became president of Google China. He stayed until September 2009, leaving not long before Google pulled out of the country over the government's demand that it censor information. Since then, he has become a well-known technology magnate in China and a respected expert in artificial intelligence.

Feng Li/Getty Images

At the conference, Lee said Chinese technologists have a thing or two to teach American counterparts and not just about how to operate in China. Lee says Chinese "gladiator" entrepreneurs know how to build "impregnable business models." They have also succeeded in a couple of tech sectors where success eluded the Americans.

The first one he cited was video-based social networks. Sure enough, excluding YouTube, there is a long list of defunct or all but forgotten US startups in this category: Vine, Chatroulette, and Airtime. The other segment was mobile payments. According to Lee, America has clung to the idea of paying with credit cards, while electronic transactions in China are much easier and more efficient.

"Paypal is too afraid of the credit card companies," Lee said. "What if (PayPal managers) just said, 'Sorry shareholders, we're going to see our share price drop, but we're not doing credit cards anymore. We're going to do direct transactions for you. Connect us to your banks and you'll save transaction fees. For the time being, we'll lose a bunch of business, but this is how we get rid of this parasite on society.' Credit cards are adding no value to our lives."

"I carry no cash , no credit cards and I probably save five minutes a day not doing all the transaction (process)," Lee continued. "I'm now buying things so much more easily and no one is making 3 percent. Think of all the small and medium businesses that survive on a 3-percent margin and that's all just taken by the credit card companies. They served a great purpose for America. They pushed us forward to become a spending society, but their historical purpose is over. It's time to accept modern payment, a real mobile payment."

The end of Les Moonves' 20-year tenure as CBS' chief executive leaves the company's chief operating officer, Joseph Ianniello, as president and acting CEO.

Moonves stepped down as CEO and chairman on Sunday evening after a series of new sexual harassment and assault allegations were made against him in a New Yorker report.

Ianniello joined CBS in 1997 and worked his way up through various financial roles to become the company's chief financial officer in 2009. He was then promoted to chief operating officer in 2013, a position he held until Moonves left.

An industry analyst thinks Ianniello's tenure as interim CEO is likely to be short, however, in large part because of his close rapport with Moonves.

Deadline last month reported on private exchanges between Ianniello and Moonves that were made public as a result of the company's legal battle with its controlling shareholder, National Amusements, owned by the Redstone family.

The outlet wrote that the exchanges were made on the disappearing-text app TigerText before The New Yorker first detailed allegations of sexual misconduct against Moonves in July and depicted Moonves and Ianniello as "two confederates in a high-stakes corporate war."

Ianniello reportedly messaged Moonves "I will have your back to the end!" following a May 13 CBS board meeting in which the board voted to institute a stock dividend that would dilute the Redstone family's voting control of the company. Ianniello's messages also contained supportive messages referring to "The Godfather" and a promise to his boss that said, "This way you are not alone," according to Deadline.

The media analyst Rich Greenfield of BTIG predicted in a note released Sunday evening that Ianniello would be gone from the company by the end of 2018:

"We believe acting CBS CEO, Joseph Ianniello, will likely leave the company before the end of calendar 2018 - similar to how acting Viacom CEO, Tom Dooley, lasted only 90 days after the departure of former CEO, Philippe Dauman ... Ianniello protected Moonves for years, had a similar focus on short-term cheerleading actions versus real long-term strategy, and was overpaid for years for his support of Moonves."

Greenfield wrote that CBS would most likely seek a replacement for Ianniello from outside the company's executive ranks.

In a video uploaded to Twitter on September 8th, Elon Musk's Boring Company is seen using an Xbox One controller to manipulate heavy machinery. The tongue-in-cheek post is captioned "Best video game ever" and shows someone using the controller's analog sticks and triggers to rotate the machine and perform different actions.

While, to the casual observer, using an Xbox controller may not seem like the best way to handle such massive machinery, it's not unheard of: The US Navy plans to use Xbox 360 controllers to operate the periscopes on its new submarines, due to their ease of use and familiarity among young sailors, and Xbox controllers have also been used with autonomous cars, including military support vehicles.

During an interview with comedian Joe Rogan last week, Musk said The Boring Company originally began as a hobby project born out of a joke, but the company now has major infrastructure projects planned for Chicago, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and Hawthorne, California. The company's Los Angeles project is called Dugout Loop and aims to install a zero-emissions, high speed transportation system underneath the city.

Dugout Loop will run along a newly excavated three-mile tunnel from Dodger Stadium to a western terminus near existing Los Angeles metro stations. The transit system will travel up to 150 miles per hour and The Boring Company has promised a commute of under four minutes for special events at the stadium. The company has already shown significant progress with the excavation of the Los Angeles tunnel, sharing footage of the tunnel's starting point on social media.

The Boring Company's sense of humor may not go over so well with critics of the Dugout Loop, who have called out the project for a lack of oversight. While speaking with Rogan, Musk admitted that the project may not end up being successful, but could provide a much needed alternative within the clogged Los Angeles transit network.

There's far too much plastic in the world's oceans, and the problem continues to build up.

Every little bit of plastic that gets tossed into the ocean or swept downstream out to sea either sinks or is picked up by currents. Much of it is eventually carried into one of five massive ocean regions, where plastic can be so concentrated that areas have garnered names like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

On Saturday, the Ocean Cleanup Foundation plans to deploy a massive plastic-collecting array with the hope that it can remove plastic debris from this part of the ocean. Some ocean researchers who study plastic pollution have questioned the plan, saying it may not be able to effectively remove enough plastic to be worth the cost and that it may harm marine life. But until it's out in the water, we won't know how much of an impact it'll have. If they deem it successful, the foundation hopes to launch a whole fleet of similar devices.

While "garbage patch" might make you think of something you pass by on the side of the road, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the North Pacific Ocean is less like a patch and more like a massive swirling vortex more than three times the size of Spain and more than twice the size of Turkey or Texas.

And it's growing and collecting more plastic rapidly, according to a study published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports by researchers associated with the Ocean Cleanup Foundation.

There may be more than 16 times as much plastic in the vortex than previous studies have estimated, according to the researchers behind the study.

An aerial view of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch might at first appear to be open water. But inside there's debris from all over the world — debris that traps or is eaten by marine animals, filling up their bodies to the point of being fatal and tainting our food supply.

More than 320 million metric tons of plastic are produced every year — and a disturbing amount ends up in the ocean, with much of it accumulating in places like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Uber riders in Australia and New Zealand whose rating on the app falls below four stars could be banned from the ride-hailing app for six months, the company announced this week. Uber drivers rate their passengers after a ride a is complete. The highest possible score is five stars.

The change is meant to help improve passenger behavior, Susan Anderson, general director of Uber in Australia and New Zealand told news outlets. Anderson said examples of bad behavior include passengers not arriving at their pick-up spots on-time and choosing pick-up locations in unsafe areas.

Uber riders would typically have a rating under 4 stars if they had received multiple one-star reviews from drivers, said Anderson.

"These are the small percentage of riders who are persistently not treating drivers with respect," Anderson told the Australian news outlet, Channel Seven.

Another Uber spokesperson told BBC News that the company didn't anticipate many of its riders would be banned and that there were only "a few thousand" passengers in Australia and New Zealand who have a sub-four-star rating. More than 90% of passengers in the two countries had ratings over 4.5 stars, the company said.

There are roughly 2.8 million Uber users combined in the two countries.

The change is set to begin September 19, but Uber says passengers at risk will be issued several warnings to improve their ratings before getting kicked off the app.

Uber did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

In a blog post on its Australian website, Uber listed some of the characteristics that might help passengers get a better rating. Most of these recommendations involve simple acts of common decency.

"Drivers tell us that what they look for in riders is mutual respect and for people to treat them with courtesy," said Anderson. "So say hello, say goodbye. You don't always need to be chatty, but be respectful."

The policy of removing poorly rated passengers from the app is not new to Uber. It implemented the same guidelines in Brazil earlier this year.

Elon Musk announced some major executive changes at Tesla, shuffling in a new president to oversee automotive operations, a new Gigafactory vice president in charge of ramping up Model 3 production, and a new duo to lead Tesla's human-resources division.

Musk posted the news on the company blog Friday:

Securities and Exchange Commission filings released Friday revealed Tesla's chief accountant, Dave Morton left the company just one month after he arrived, and Toledano's departure, which was announced after she took leave from the company, comes after Ganesh Srivats, a top sales executive at the company, left under similar circumstances.

The promotions follow what have been a tumultuous few weeks for Musk, an increasingly mercurial chief executive who got himself into some hot water last month with a proposal to take Tesla private. That saga ended with a Friday night announcement in late August, in which Musk said Tesla would remain a publicly traded company.

Separately, Musk touted the company's overall progress on Friday. "We're about to have to most amazing quarter in our history, building and delivering more than twice as many cars as we did last quarter," Musk wrote. Tesla delivered 40,740 vehicles worldwide in the second quarter — 18,440 of which were Model 3 sedans.

Elon Musk introducing the second-generation Tesla Roadster, November 16, 2017. Tesla

Additionally, Musk shouted out the coming Model Y crossover, the Tesla pickup truck, Tesla Semi, and the second-generation Tesla Roadster.

He also warned there would be "a lot of fuss and noise in the media" in the near term, seemingly an acknowledgement of the fallout from a 2 1/2-hour on-camera interview he participated in just hours earlier with comedy host Joe Rogan.

The Tesla CEO mused about life and work with Rogan over whiskey and a marijuana joint. The smoke session caught lots of attention on social media Thursday night, and rattled some Tesla investors early Friday morning.

One of those investors, Ross Gerber, told Business Insider's Graham Rapier Musk has "lost a lot of confidence in some of his core investment community."

"That's what we're seeing in the stock right now," Gerber said. His firm, Gerber Kawasaki, owns about $10.5 million in Tesla stock.

Tesla shares fell as much as 10% on Friday, rebounding slightly to $265 per share in after hours trading.

Several public health officials in India are calling for Facebook to make changes to its blood donation tool, warning that the tech project — although well-meaning — risks fueling a dangerous black market for blood and harming the country's fragile blood collection system.

Facebook's one-year-old blood donation feature has already helped facilitate tens of thousands of donations since it was launched, saving lives by making it easier for people in need of transfusions to find willing donors with matching blood types.

But the tool's person-to-person format is ringing alarm bells among experts and professionals in the field, who say that it's too easy for unscrupulous characters to latch onto, leaving vulnerable people at risk of paying exorbitant prices and receiving tainted blood, among other issues.

Facebook said that it has only had one report of forbidden behavior on the tool — but the head of one Indian blood donor organization said he has been told about incidents of black market blood selling on Facebook and suggested victims of black marketers were unlikely to report them to the social media firm.

"These types of products ... definitely bring in black marketing, and it's definitely promoting it unknowingly, because it was not the intent of Facebook to promote black marketing," said Biswaroop Biswas, the National Secretary of the Federation of Indian Blood Donor Organisations (FIBDO), a coalition of 126 blood donation groups across India.

The issue, which has not been previously been reported, illustrates the ongoing challenges Facebook faces in its efforts to ensure that its 2-billion member social network is not exploited for nefarious ends, whether that be interfering in US elections or promoting ethnic cleansing in Myanmar.

The company is walking a delicate tightrope with the India blood donation tool, as it tries balance the unprecedented power, and undeniable benefits, that its technology brings with the potential for it to exacerbate thorny and endemic problems within the country.

In an interview, Facebook health product manager Hema Budaraju said: "What I would like to emphasize is our role is to get more and more blood banks to adopt our features, and to actually build up the culture of blood donation. And as you're already well aware, this system doesn't exist in the US, right? It's because donors are motivated [to give blood regularly]."

"That's the world we are trying to get to, and we are working constantly with NGOs and blood banks."

India has a worrying black market in blood

India quite simply doesn't have enough blood to go around.

There is an annual deficit of more than one million units of blood in the country — meaning patients can sometimes be forced to search for their own sources of blood, asking their social circle for donations or even paying illegal black marketers extortionate sums.

As Facebook grew in the country, it became an avenue for people to request blood donations from others in their network. In response, Facebook launched a tool in 2017 to try and facilitate donations more formally.

Initially available in India and now also live in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Brazil, Facebook's blood donation tool allows organisations and individuals to put out requests for blood donors on the social network at short-notice. Users can voluntarily register themselves on Facebook as blood donors, and then, when a request is put out nearby, they may be notified (or view them in a centralized hub).

These requests may be sent by medical institutions like hospitals and blood banks as part of broad donation drives, or individuals who require blood on behalf on themselves or a family member imminently, and who may or may not be in a medical institution.

More than 11 million people have now signed up for the service across the four countries it operates in, and it has facilitated tens of thousands of donations.

A publicity photo from Facebook showing a request on the blood donation tool.Facebook

There is an existing black market for blood in India, preying on desperate sufferers amid blood shortages. FIBDO expressed concerns that Facebook's product may help fuel this. Black market agents can register on the platform as donors, Biswas said. Then, when notifications and requests go out, the agents can contact the requester directly, offering them blood for a fee.

He said he has spoken to people who have been approached by black market blood sellers on Facebook.

Budaraju said the company has multiple safeguards in place to protect users. New accounts aren't sent notifications about requests, and "the registrations we receive are doubly checked against fake and spammy accounts." Users are also able to report other users if they ask for money in return for blood, and she said there has only been one instance of a report through the platform to date — a post that was soliciting blood in exchange for money, in Bangladesh. (The user was subsequently made unable to use the blood donation tool.)

However, Biswas, who also sits on the governing body of the National Blood Transfusion Council, was skeptical that users would report black market issues to Facebook, suggesting they would simply pay up in a time of need instead. "If you need blood and people ask for money ... Will [you] report or just go with the donor [and] pay him?"

Chethan Gowda, student founder of blood donor organisation Khoon, said unscrupulous middlemen could also potentially use the platform to sell blood at extortionate rates: "The racket personnel can also request for blood, arrange for a donor through Facebook and on the other hand charge huge amount from the patient family, wherein the blood donor who turned up to donate blood will have no idea of what's going on on the other end."

And black market blood that hasn't been vetted carries a risk of being misclassified, tainted or otherwise dangerous, health experts say.

Gowda added: "The Facebook blood donation tool is not only trying to save lives but also indirectly helping to create a very disastrous and illegal blood donation activities."

These problems all pre-date Facebook — but now it has to deal with them

These kinds of problems long pre-date Facebook's entry into the blood donation space, and also take place on other online platforms, Biswas said. Facebook also continues to work with NGOs and blood donor organisations in India to encourage donations, including NTR Trust, the National Blood Transfusion Council, and Giants International.

"There are known issues of scams/exploitation or bad actors in blood donation in some of the countries where our feature is available," Budaraju said in an email. "We've worked closely with partner organizations and NGOs to understand those concerns and the challenges they deal with in order to build a product that helps makes it easier for people to sign-up to be blood donors and find opportunities to donate nearby while also mitigating these risks. While there may be a few bad actors, we see a lot more good happening as a result of this feature."

She said that partners "highlighted a few concerns about potential ... scam[s] or abuse that could happen on Facebook, which is why we've designed the product with a number of safeguards in place. No partners have raised issues since we launched the product in each country, but we continue to work closely with them to ensure the feature is as safe and useful as possible."

But the concerns of the Indian organizations who spoke to Business Insider point to how as Facebook moves into new markets and experiments with new tools designed to do good, it has been forced to grapple with unprecedented new challenges that would have been unimaginable when it was founded as a simple network for college students in 2004.

Facebook has stumbled in India before, with Free Basics — a program to provide a free, limited internet service to users in emerging markets. Facebook promoted it as a magnanimous project, but it was met with protests, and the company was accused of "digital colonialism" and violating net neutrality principles.

A nurse takes blood from a volunteer on April 17, 2007, Manchester, England. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

India wants to move away from 'replacement' blood donations

India has set itself a goal: By 2020, it wants to hit 100% voluntary blood donation.

This means 100% of the blood used in the country will come from volunteers proactively going to hospitals, blood banks, and donation drives to donate, which will then be distributed as necessary. At present, a portion of India's blood donations come from what is known as "replacement blood donations" — when a donor agrees to give blood specifically for someone in their network, rather than to the general blood bank.

This system can be problematic, with donors sometimes feeling pressured to donate blood to those in their community, and the lack of anonymity sometimes causing issues with donors attempting to extract favors (if not outright payment) from the recipients.

FIBDO is concerned that Facebook's mechanism for connecting donors and recipients directly can encourage replacement blood donation. "When they got in touch with us, we told them this is not the way you people will be able to help the society," Biswas said. He believes that Facebook's one-to-one model effectively violates India's National Blood Policy, which calls for a movement away from replacement donors, and he would like to see Facebook remove one-to-one donation options.

Facebook disagrees, arguing that its one-to-one model is a step forward from the status quo, and that it too wants to see a 100% voluntary blood donation model implemented as soon as possible.

Without Facebook's tools, people needing donations might ask people in real life for a donation, applying significant pressure, Budaraju said. In contrast, Facebook's notifications will also go to people outside a recipient's existing social circle, to people who have already registered and signaled their willingness to donate. The recipient is also unaware of the potential donors' identities unless they choose to respond and share information about themselves.

"In some ways I fundamentally believe the current system that we built on Facebook, even when used in the person-to-person, is a step towards voluntary, because people are under no coercion, do not have social pressures, are choosing to respond of their own volition and going in to donate," Facebook's Budaraju said. "So it's actually the opposite of the replacement system."

Facebook's founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. REUTERS/Charles Platiau

There are worries around blood wastage

Another area of concern is around potential blood wastage.

Srijan Pal Singh, the CEO of developmental NGO The Kalam Centre, said that Facebook's focus on increasing blood donations, without building out further blood storage infrastructure, could result in some of the blood drawn being wasted.

"The time we worked with them, it seemed all about creating more units, but that's not the idea. It's not about creating more units, it's about helping more lives, and there's a difference between the two," he said.

"It's a well-known fact, three million units of blood was wasted in five years [in India] so unless you have the mechanism to store this blood it doesn't make sense."

Facebook responded that it believes that other organisations in the blood donation ecosystem are better placed to work on these problems than it. "We are still a relatively young product, we are focusing on .. Facebook's strengths in terms of education, communication, context, and in bringing awareness, and to build simple tools for blood banks and hospitals,"Budaraju said.

"I don't know that we would be the most effective people to think about storage and infrastructure."

'People will try to abuse those services in every way possible'

It's difficult to assess to what extent some of these concerns might actually be happening on Facebook.

Khoon's Chethan Gowda conceded that it's hard to measure whether the illegal behavior he has seen elsewhere is taking place on Facebook. "Concrete example[s] of a similar scenario happening through the Facebook blood donation tool is tough," he said. "As there's no track on the request."

Singh urged Facebook to get ahead of the problem. "When you have so much outreach and access, a lot of these touts and brokers may emerge, this is a possibility that I also hope Facebook sees will come up," he said. "When they are implementing this platform with all this good intent they should not end up becoming a victim of encouraging a whole black market brokerage."

Biswas said he is confident that black market selling is already taking place on Facebook, and has spoken to people who have been approached by blood sellers on the platform: "These things are happening. And as you can see when the people are in need of blood, they won't come out to say to the donor organisations afterwards that people are coming and asking for money."

Despite these alleged flaws, Facebook believes it has built a significant improvement on the previous status quo — desperate patients and their families posting unregulated and unmonitored requests for blood directly onto Facebook and other platforms across the web. Both Facebook and FIBDO agree that a priority is education and promoting a cultural shift towards voluntary blood donation; Facebook plans to roll out educational resources for donors in the product soon.

The company also continues to work with NGOs and blood donation organisations, who have heralded its work to drive blood donations and save lives. "Facebook has long been a positive platform for people in India to connect with Blood Donors and help those in need. NTR Trust welcomes Facebook's efforts to help make it even easier for people to donate blood in India," Vishnu Vardhan, CEO of non-profit organisation NTR Trust, said in a statement when the feature first launched. "We look forward to working together to raise awareness of the importance of donating blood and collectively catalyze sustainable access to safe blood in India. What Facebook is doing has the potential to bring tectonic shifts in Blood Banking in India."

On Friday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg published a post on the social network reflecting on Facebook's efforts to fix its platform over the last year.

"What I've learned so far is that when you build services that are used by billions of people across countries and cultures, you will see all of the good humanity is capable of, and people will try to abuse those services in every way possible," he wrote.

"It is our responsibility to amplify the good and mitigate the bad."

Do you work at Facebook? Do you know more? Contact this reporter via Signal or WhatsApp at +1 (650) 636-6268 using a non-work phone, email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., WeChat at robaeprice, or Twitter DM at @robaeprice. (PR pitches by email only, please.)You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

Apple said that tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods proposed by the Trump administration could result in higher prices for its products in a letter to the government published on Friday.

In it, Apple says the proposed tariffs would "cover a wide range of Apple products" as well as other materials that Apple uses to make its products.

Those products include Apple Watch and AirPods, two of Apple's core product lines. "Second, because all tariffs ultimately show up as a tax on U.S. consumers, they will increase the cost of Apple products that our customers have come to rely on in their daily lives," Apple wrote in the letter.

Here's a chart with the consumer products Apple expects to be affected. The full letter, which includes a chart with affected Apple components, is at the bottom of this post:

Regulations.gov From Apple's comment, dated September 5:

"The proposed tariff list covers a wide range of Apple products and the products used in our U.S. operations: Apple digital health and wireless connectivity products, including Apple Watch, Apple Pencil and Air Pods; Apple computing tools such as MacMini; Apple adapters, cables and chargers engineered for efficiency and safety; Apple-designed components and made-to-specification tooling for Apple's U.S. manufacturing and product repair facilities; specialty testing equipment for Apple's U.S. product development labs; and servers, hard drives and cables for Apple's U.S. data centers that support our global services such as the App Store."

On Friday, President Donald Trump said the tariffs could be implemented "very soon," but White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said the administration would evaluate public comments — like Apple's — before making any final decisions.

Economists argue that Trump's tariffs could cause the cost of goods to increase for businesses and consumers in the United States, a point of view Apple agrees with in the unsigned letter. Apple also said that tariffs would harm Apple compared to its international competitors.

In addition, proposed tariffs require time and effort to evaluate, Apple CEO Tim Cook said during the company's last earnings call.

"Our view on tariffs is that they show up as a tax on the consumer and wind up resulting in lower economic growth and sometimes can bring about significant risk of unintended consequences," Cook said. "That said, the trade relationships and agreements that the U.S. has between the U.S. and other major economies are very complex and it's clear that several are in need of modernizing, but we think that in the vast majority of situations that tariffs are not the approach to doing that and so we're sort of encouraging dialogue and so forth."

"I can't predict the future, but I am optimistic that the countries will get through this and we are hoping that calm heads prevail," he continued.

An Apple representative didn't have anything to add to the letter.

Apple shares dropped over 1% shortly after the letter was published but have been flat in after-hours trading.

NASA's only robot exploring the asteroid belt is about to die, the space agency explained during a live event on Friday.

However, the Dawn probe pulled off a last-ditch maneuver this summer that is helping to create surface maps of a dwarf planet — information that may be used to land a future mission on the distant world.

Dawn launched in 2007 and became the first NASA mission to use superefficient ion thrusters. In its yearslong voyage through deep space, the robot ended up in the asteroid belt, the mysterious and expansive zone between Mars and Jupiter. There, it has studied the region's two largest objects: Ceres and Vesta.

Dawn reached Vesta first, in July 2011. Researchers think of Vesta, the second-largest object in the asteroid belt, as a "time capsule" for planet formation, since it failed to grow into something larger after the solar system's birth.

After a year of exploration at Vesta, Dawn ion-propelled itself toward Ceres, a Texas-sized dwarf planet, where it arrived in March 2015. Ever since then, Dawn has made several major discoveries about the 592-mile-wide ice ball, including an ice volcano, shiny salt deposits, and other features that suggest a giant ocean may hide beneath the world's cratered crust — possibly one that could harbor alien microbes.

A false-color view of the dwarf planet Ceres.NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDANASA has since used up most of Dawn's remaining fuel to slip into an orbit that zooms within 22 miles of Ceres' surface about once a day.

These flybys are about 10 times as close as the International Space Station orbits above Earth and have led to the sharpest, clearest images of the dwarf planet yet.

"This orbit was like putting your glasses on if you don't see very well — all of the sudden, all of this rich detail is popping out," Carol Raymond, Dawn's principal investigator and a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said during the press event on Friday. "It will give us some insight as to what's going on with the plumbing system under the surface."

However, these unprecedented images and other data have come with a cost: a death for Dawn before the end of the year.

Why Dawn is now doomed

A mosaic image of Cerealia Facula, a site with a collection of salt deposits in Occator crater, the largest impact site on Ceres.NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/PSI

Using up Dawn's fuel to achieve such a close orbit has essentially stranded the spacecraft at Ceres.

"The current orbit should be stable for 50 years," Mark Sykes, the director of the Planetary Science Institute and a scientist on the Dawn mission, told Business Insider in an email. "There is no desire to change the orbit — and no juice."

Dawn uses its "juice" to keep itself powered and talking to NASA. So using up the last propellant will forever silence the probe.

"It will struggle for a short time, but it will be impotent," Marc Rayman, Dawn's mission manager and chief engineer, wrote in a blog post on August 22. "Unable to point its electricity-generating solar panels at the sun or its radio antenna to Earth, the seasoned explorer will go silent and will explore no more. Its expedition will be over."

Rayman said on Friday that Dawn might go silent within a month or so.

"We can't determine that with exquisite accuracy," he told Business Insider during the press event, adding that it was likely to run out of propellant (and stop talking to Earth) "sometime in the middle of this month to the middle of October."

But the team, while sad about the probe's coming demise, is counting its blessings, since the expedition was supposed to last nine years but has been going for nearly 11. Plus, Dawn continues to take high-resolution images of the surface once every 27 hours.

NASA's Dawn probe photographed landslides on the rim of Occator crater on Ceres.NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Once the probe runs out of fuel, it won't spiral down and crash into Ceres for at least 20 years. In fact, Rayman said, the team's analysis shows a "greater than 99%" chance that Dawn will stay in its current orbit for half a century, "and most likely longer than that."

NASA wants to bring a sample of Ceres back to Earth

Rayman said the 20-year no-crash minimum was a core requirement of the Dawn mission.

That's because NASA's planetary protection office, which tries to prevent contamination of other worlds by microbes from Earth, thinks two decades should be enough time for the agency to mount another mission to Ceres. A new probe could then look for signs of life without worrying about contamination by any microbes from Earth stuck to Dawn when it crashed.

"Ceres represents a place in the solar system that we're interested in for future astrobiological exploration," Rayman said. "If NASA chooses to mount a follow-on mission to conduct subsequent astrobiological exploration, it's long enough to without being compromised by Dawn."

Jim Green, NASA's chief scientist, said the agency had pulled together working groups to come up with a plan to send a robot to the surface of Ceres, possibly near a vent, where it could probe salts and other materials — and maybe even send samples from the dwarf planet back to Earth.

What planetary scientists think it looks like inside Ceres. The crust is most likely made of ice, and below may be a layer of briny mud. Its core may be water or metal.NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

"We'll work out in the next decade whether one of those missions will indeed be going back to Ceres," Green said on Friday.

The stakes are high as researchers discover more water and organic compounds elsewhere in the solar system — ingredients that may sustain rudimentary forms of alien life.

"We know there is an active geological cycle that's bringing material from deep [inside] up to the surface," Carol Raymond said. "That gives us an opportunity to sample some of Ceres' internal material."

As Dawn continues to rack up high-resolution images of Ceres' surface, the argument for collecting a sample of the dwarf planet may be strengthened.

"The holy grail of any planetary-science mission is a sample return, but it's also very difficult," Raymond said. "With an object like Ceres, you really want to know where to sample."

This story has been updated with new information. It was originally published at 1:27 p.m. ET on September 7, 2018.

The chief financial officer of Unity Technologies, whose software tools are used to make games and augmented-reality apps, has left the company, Business Insider has learned.

Unity did not offer a reason for his departure, but in an email sent to company employees in June announcing it, company CEO John Riccitiello said it was "friendly and the decision mutual."

"I want to sincerely thank Mike for his many contributions to Unity," Riccitiello said in the email. He continued: "I will certainly miss him."

Mike Foley's LinkedIn page, which still lists him as Unity's chief financial officer. Mike Foley/LinkedIn Unity spokeswoman Amanda Taggart confirmed Foley's resignation and Riccitiello's letter.

"We're actively looking for a CFO replacement and have some great candidates in the mix," she said in an email.

Foley's departure came soon after the company quietly raised some $145 million in new funding. That funding, which the company closed in June, according to Crunchbase, was part of the company's series D round that it began raising last year. It initially raised $250 million as part of that round in May 2017, according to Crunchbase.

In total Unity, whose tools were used to make the popular "Pokémon Go" game, has raised some $601.5 million. In an interview this week with Business Insider, Riccitiello declined to say whether the company is profitable or whether it expects to raise additional funds in the private market on top of the money it raised in June. He also declined to give any timeline for a potential public offering.

"We're thinking of giving serious thought to questions around an IPO and if and when, but saying that we will and putting a time frame on it is not something that guys like me do lightly," he said.

The Federal Reserve is a critically important body for the global economy that's also frequently misunderstood.

So what happens when you visit the biggest video website in the world, YouTube, which is owned by Google, and look for some basic information about the US central bank?

If you thought you might learn about the Fed's dual mandates for shaping monetary policy, or about the 12 regional banks in the Federal Reserve System, you'd be mistaken.

Instead, what you'll get is a jumble of harebrained conspiracy theories and misinformation, as MSNBC's Chris Hayes pointed out in a series of tweets that are going viral.

All you have to do is type "Federal Reserve" into YouTube to tumble into the bizarre rabbit hole. As Hayes points out, this is pretty worrisome if you imagine a student, or any other well-meaning citizen, trying to educate themselves on the topic.

Follow along with Hayes' thread below, as he demonstrates step-by-step how easily someone can unwittingly be steered by YouTube into the world of the lunatic fringe:

Business Insider was able to recreate all of Hayes' findings in an up-to-date Chrome browser in Incognito Mode on Friday.

And the problem is even broader than what Hayes described.

Hayes' example was based on clicking the top video search result for "Federal Reserve." But most of the other search results YouTube serves up on the page are equally problematic.

YouTube

The top result, which is a paid ad, is from Marginal Revolution University, which is a respected blog run by economists from George Mason University. While the video may take its own stance on controversial topics, it's not going to present any outright misinformation.

There's also a 2013 documentary that appears to be a ripped version of a movie that's on sale from YouTube for $2.99. This video also seems like it's based on reliable information.

But that video's 176,000 views are dwarfed by three videos that are purely conspiratorial — the aforementioned "Century of Enslavement," at 1.6 million views, "The Creature from Jekyll Island," with 557,000 views, and "The Federal Reserve Explained in 3 Minutes," with 794,058 views.

Hayes isn't the only person to encounter this exact issue with finding reliable information on YouTube. A comment on that last video:

Screenshot/YouTube

What's funny is that Google's search results for "Federal Reserve" are far superior, with links to the actual official Federal Reserve website, tweets from the Federal Reserve, a Wikipedia article, and news articles from reliable sources like Bloomberg and Business Insider.

YouTube has been swept up in recent controversies about misinformation and disinformation on large platforms. In July, it announced new features including a "news shelf" on top of search results with links to reliable articles and additional context.

"We said, look, people are coming to our homepage and if we are just showing them videos of gaming or music and something really significant happened in the world, and we are not showing it to them, then in many ways we're missing this opportunity," YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said in March.

After an inquiry from Business Insider, YouTube representative Chris Dale said the team was aware of the issues. "Hey @chrislhayes. We're definitely aware and our engineering team is working to improve things. We rolled authoritative ranking for breaking news and news queries. We'll build out to other topics, but it will take time," he tweeted, adding a link to this announcement page.

Getty Images

Tesla sank more than 10% Friday, below $260 a share, after the electric-car maker revealed that its chief accountant, Dave Morton, had resigned Tuesday.

"Since I joined Tesla on August 6th, the level of public attention placed on the company, as well as the pace within the company, have exceeded my expectations," Morton said in comments revealed Friday in a regulatory filing.

"As a result, this caused me to reconsider my future. I want to be clear that I believe strongly in Tesla, its mission, and its future prospects, and I have no disagreements with Tesla's leadership or its financial reporting."

Morton took over the role in August after Eric Branderiz left the post after nearly two years. Morton's resignation comes after departures by other Tesla executives including the company's chief engineer Doug Field and top sales executive Ganesh Srivats, each of whom resigned in July. A vice president and a product director departed Tesla's energy unit in May.

Also Friday, Bloomberg reported that Tesla's chief people officer, Gaby Toledano, would not be returning from a leave of absence she took in August. She did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Morton — who did not respond to a request for comment — joined Tesla last month from Seagate Technology, where he served as a vice president for two decades and CFO for almost three years. His first day, August 6, was two days before CEO Elon Musk's tweet about taking Tesla private that has ended in lawsuits and investigations by federal regulators.

CNBC reported Friday that Morton started having second thoughts about the new job about two weeks in, according to a person familiar with the terms of his departure. "When Morton offered advice about capitalizing the company through other means rather than going private, he was ignored," the source told CNBC. 

Now, with the company set on staying public, its finances are under extreme scrutiny from investors and analysts as it fights to become profitable. After rising as high as $387, shares of Tesla have fallen 32% to $261.

Markets Insider

If you ever need to livestream to your Twitter followers while you're having a bad hair day, you're in luck — Twitter just added an audio-only livestreaming feature.

The feature, which is currently only rolling out to iOS devices, is accessed just like Twitter's existing Periscope livestreaming. Tap the 'compose tweet' button, click 'Live' at the bottom of the tweet field, and then click on the microphone to disable the video feed. After that, you're ready to go live in an audio-only broadcast.

Twitter

The "Live" button is easy enough to find.

Twitter

Then, just hit the Mic, and you're good to go.

Twitter

In 2007, the Airbus A380 entered service to great fanfare. The gargantuan jet, dubbed the superjumbo, was designed to take everything that made the Boeing 747 an icon and push it to the limits of modern engineering.

A decade later, things are very different for the A380.

The superjumbo hasn't been the game changer Airbus had hoped it would become when the massive double-decker was conceived two decades ago. This is especially the case on the financial front.

For much of the plane's life, Airbus has struggled to find airlines willing to put the A380 into service.

With a price tag of $445.6 million, the A380 is one of the most expensive and lavish airplanes ever built. With room for as many as 800 passengers, the double-decker's sheer size means it's an occasion whenever a superjumbo arrives.

But in a cost-conscious market and with fluctuating fuel prices, the very attributes that made the plane stand out may have also doomed it. Some say the A380 came two decades too late, while others say that with increasing airport congestion, the plane is ahead of its time.

Some industry observers, such as the Teal Group analyst Richard Aboulafia, have gone so far as to call it the biggest mistake in the history of Airbus. According to Aboulafia, the A380 is a poorly executed aircraft designed for a market that doesn't really exist. As a result, the $25 billion that Airbus spent on the A380 program could have been better used elsewhere, like on a rival for Boeing's next-generation 777X or on a true replacement for the aging Boeing 757, Aboulafia told Business Insider.

Regardless, no one can deny the engineering marvel of the aircraft. Here's a look at the topsy-turvy history of the Airbus A380 superjumbo.