The Morning Download: The Case for Making Everyone Use AI

Good morning. Almost all big companies encourage their people to use AI. I am willing to wager that most of them don’t make its usage mandatory. Rubrik is one of those that do require companywide participation, though. It simply isn’t a choice, according to Bipul Sinha, co-founder and CEO of the cybersecurity company that went public two years ago.

"We are deploying AI everywhere. In fact, we are mandating that every employee should use Claude Cowork and if you are an engineer, you must use Claude Code,” Sinha said.

Sinha explained his rationale for mandatory AI usage last night during a fascinating discussion with WSJ Leadership Institute President Alan Murray at the institute’s CFO Council Summit. Here are highlights of the conversation. The summit continues today in Palo Alto, and we’ll bring you more highlights as it unfolds.

Read on for more of Sinha’s insights into how leaders can get the most out of AI.

Why AI should be mandatory

AI has killed cybersecurity as we know it

Security is about resilience, not complete safety

Is mandating the use of AI a good idea? Let us know what you think.

CFOs say AI is coming for admin jobs. A survey of 750 chief financial officers found AI will have minimal 2026 job impact overall, with about a 0.4% reduction, primarily affecting clerical and administrative roles. For more advanced roles, respondents were more likely to say AI would enhance work. Economists call this skills-biased technological change: the tendency of new technologies to hollow out routine work while complementing jobs held by more highly educated workers.

How Nvidia keeps its iron grip on the AI boom. Nvidia has used its AI chip dominance to become Silicon Valley's most powerful financier, the Journal reports. Much of the tens of billions of dollars it invests in promising startups and supporting key customers flows back to the company in the form of chip orders.

Server maker Super Micro Computer is another firm whose survival hinges on Nvidia's chip allocations. Last week it got complicated, when a co-founder was arrested for smuggling top-of-the-line B200 chips to China— underscoring just how desperately the world wants Nvidia's technology, and how far some will go to get it. 

In a statement, Nvidia says strict compliance with export controls is a “top priority.” 

In the wake of the scandal, a bipartisan group of senators called upon the Commerce Department to suspend Nvidia's export licenses to China and Southeast Asia, the FT reports. President Trump in January ok'd Nvidia's petitions to sell its chips in China. 

The chip security crackdown is spreading beyond semiconductors.

The Federal Communications Commission banned imports of foreign-made consumer routers citing national security threats, Bloomberg reports. 

China, meanwhile, is accelerating its own AI hardware independence. Alibaba launched a new RISC-V-based CPU optimized for agentic AI and cloud inferencing, Bloomberg reports.

SK Hynix is purchasing $8 billion in ASML advanced lithography equipment to expand next-generation chip production, boosting its leading position supplying high-bandwidth memory to Nvidia.

OpenAI's ad hire. OpenAI has hired Dave Dugan, a former top advertising executive at Meta Platforms to lead ad sales, a high-profile hire that underscores the company's urgent push to generate new revenue streams to support its AI projects and computing needs.

OnlyFans owner dies. Leo Radvinsky, the reclusive billionaire who turned OnlyFans into an adult-content powerhouse, has died “after a long battle with cancer,” the company said. He was 43. Radvinsky succeeded by capitalizing on some of modern society's favorite things in the attention economy: Staring at screens, creating personal brands and porn.

Be careful what AI insights you share on LinkedIn. A Cornell University study found workers most impressed by corporatespeak tend to make worse business decisions and show lower analytical thinking, Guardian reports. 

Several locations in Israel were targeted by fresh barrages of Iranian missiles, with authorities releasing images of charred buildings and burned-out cars, while Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia said they had been hit by fresh attacks. (WSJ)

Senators said they were closing in on a deal to fund all of the Department of Homeland Security except for the agency that carries out immigrant arrests and deportations, signaling a possible breakthrough after a more than monthlong standoff. (WSJ)

The Defense Department introduced new restrictions on press access on Monday, days after a federal judge ruled that key elements of the limits it introduced last year were unconstitutional. (WSJ)