Business
William Langewiesche, the ‘Steve McQueen of Journalism,’ Dies at 70
William Langewiesche, a magazine writer and author who forged complex narratives with precision-tooled prose that shed fresh light on national security, the occupation of Iraq and, especially, aviation disasters — he was a professional pilot — died on Sunday in East Lyme, Conn. He was 70.
Cullen Murphy, his longtime editor at The Atlantic and Vanity Fair, confirmed the death, at the home of a friend, saying the cause was prostate cancer.
Mr. Langewiesche (pronounced long-gah-vee-shuh) was one of the most prominent long-form nonfiction writers of recent decades. He was an international correspondent for Vanity Fair, a writer-at-large for The New York Times Magazine and a national correspondent for The Atlantic.
For 10 years running, from 1999 to 2008, his pieces were finalists for the National Magazine Award, and he won it twice: in 2007 for “Rules of Engagement,” about the killing of 24 unarmed civilians by U.S. Marines in 2005 in Haditha, Iraq; and in 2002 for “The Crash of EgyptAir 990,” about a flight that went down in the Atlantic Ocean in 1999 with the loss of all 217 people aboard.
He chose to write often about calamitous events, piecing together a meticulous explanation for what went wrong while portraying the human subjects under his microscope with sympathy.
“At his best there’s a sort of cinematic omniscience in the way he writes,” Mr. Murphy said in an interview. “And so you feel almost as he feels, with your face pressed up against the window watching something unfold, often very rapidly, and often wishing that things would unfold very differently but knowing there’s nothing that can be done.”
Mr. Langewiesche’s account of the EgyptAir crash in 1999, which was profoundly enriched by his own aviation background, blamed a suicidal co-pilot. Egyptian officials refused to accept that conclusion, a response, he wrote, that was rooted in political and cultural chauvinism.
Mr. Langewiesche learned to fly as a boy and worked as a commercial pilot early on to support his literary ambition. He drew on his aviation expertise in a number of articles and books that laid out highly technical subjects in lucid prose.
Writing about Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III’s famous landing of a commercial airliner in the Hudson River in 2009, Mr. Langewiesche made the case that that injury-free belly flop was a testament more to modern airplane technology than to the heroism of the pilot.
Captain Sullenberger took issue with that account, telling The New York Times that Mr. Langewiesche’s book about the episode, “Fly by Wire,” contained “misstatements of fact.”
Reviewing “Fly by Wire” in The Times, the book critic Dwight Garner wrote, “Written quickly, it lacks some of the eloquence and steely control of Mr. Langewiesche’s earlier books.” Mr. Garner called Mr. Langewiesche “the Steve McQueen of American journalism,” referring to the author’s muscular prose style and often gripping subject matter.
In other projects — pursued thanks to editors who allowed him months for reporting and writing — Mr. Langewiesche wrote an account in The Atlantic in 2006 about how terrorists might obtain a nuclear bomb; another article, also in The Atlantic, in 2004, dissected the sinking of a ferry in the Baltic Sea a decade earlier.
His 2002 book, “American Ground: Unbuilding The World Trade Center,” based on a three-part series in The Atlantic, was reported over six months at ground zero as he meticulously covered the cleanup after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Not all of his work described life and death dramas. His profile of Robert M. Parker Jr. in The Atlantic, “The Million-Dollar Nose,” opened with the enticing line: “The most influential critic in the world today happens to be a critic of wine.”
Closer to form, he wrote about another aviation mystery: the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines flight with 277 passengers over the Indian Ocean in 2014, an article that generated enormous readership for The Atlantic.
The plane remained aloft for hours after someone in the cockpit shut down its communication signals, then plunged into the Indian Ocean.
Mr. Langewiesche hypothesized a scenario in which a pilot intent on murder-suicide had asphyxiated his passengers by climbing to 40,000 feet while depressurizing the cabin, then cruised onward until the fuel ran out and the plane plummeted.
“The scene would have been dimly lit by the emergency lights,” Mr. Langewiesche wrote, imagining those hours in chilling detail, “with the dead belted into their seats, their faces nestled in the worthless oxygen masks dangling on tubes from the ceiling.”
Of the captain, the last living soul in the plane, he wrote, “The cockpit is the deepest, most protective, most private sort of home.”
William Archibald Langewiesche was born on June 12, 1955, in Sharon, Conn. His mother, Priscila (Coleman) Langewiesche, was a computer analyst. His father, Wolfgang Langewiesche, a German-born émigré, was a test pilot for the maker of the Corsair fighter used by the U.S. Navy; he wrote a classic book on flying, “Stick and Rudder,” in the 1940s.
William, a late child, had an adult sister and brothers when he was growing up. His father taught him to fly before the boy could see over the instrument panel. Later, as an undergraduate at Stanford University, Mr. Langewiesche helped pay his way through college by piloting air taxis and charters.
After earning a degree in anthropology, he moved to New York City and worked for Flying magazine. But he quit the job because he aspired to write literary nonfiction, in part inspired by The New Yorker writer John McPhee. While struggling to be published, Mr. Langewiesche supported himself as a corporate pilot.
“Other people trying to break into writing have to work as waiters,” he told Aviation News in 2001, “and I considered myself as having a technical skill — like a welder — that I could use to support myself.”
His breakthrough came in 1991, when The Atlantic published as its November cover story his article “The World in Its Extreme,’’ a 17,000-word travelogue and natural history of the Sahara Desert. He went on to write for the magazine as a national correspondent for 15 years. In 2006, he became an international correspondent for Vanity Fair, where he contributed two to four lengthy articles a year through 2019.
Mr. Langewiesche married Anne-Marie Girard in 1977, and they had two children. The marriage ended in divorce in 2017, and the following year, he married Tia Cibani, who survives him.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by his son Matthew and his daughter Anna Langewiesche, both from his first marriage; his son Archibald and his daughter Castine Langewiesche, from his second marriage; and his sister, Lena Langewiesche. He lived in North Salem, N.Y., in Westchester County.
In a 2007 interview with Mediabistro, an online career site for designers and writers, Mr. Langewiesche described his method. Instead of reading exhaustively about a subject and writing questions for interviews in advance, he preferred to plunge right into a subject “with very little preparation, intentionally somewhat naïve about it.”
“I just talk to people and listen carefully and respond to what they’re saying and try to give of myself as much as I’m asking them to give of themselves, so that a true conversation can develop,” he said. “These conversations typically will go on for weeks, on and off. Sometimes I take notes.”
The real work, he said, came later when he sat down to write.
“Writing is thinking; writing is a form of thought,” he said. “It’s difficult for me to believe that real thought is possible without writing.”
Ash Wu contributed reporting.
The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services rose to $60.3 billion in March, increasing 4.4 percent from the previous month, after the Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s global tariffs, according to data from the Commerce Department released on Tuesday.
Exports grew 2 percent in the month, to a record $320.9 billion, as the United States exported more oil, soybeans and industrial supplies. The U.S. trade surplus in petroleum hit a record in March, as war with Iran pushed up the price of oil and U.S. energy exports. Imports also gained 2.3 percent in March, to $381.2 billion. The combination increased the monthly trade deficit, the gap between what the United States imports and what it exports.
Tariffs resulted in up-and-down swings in the trade deficit last year. The monthly trade deficit is now somewhat lower than it was in 2024. But overall, the figure hit a record last year, as the United States continued to import high-priced computer chips and weight-loss drugs, and importers stockpiled foreign goods before tariffs took effect.
The data provided the first snapshot of trade since the Supreme Court ruling forced major changes to the Trump administration’s tariff regime.
On Feb. 20, the Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Trump had exceeded his authority last year when he used an emergency law to impose steep tariffs on nearly every nation.
That ruling forced the administration to withdraw the double-digit tariffs it had issued under that law, which varied by country based on bilateral trade deficits. Mr. Trump immediately moved to replace those levies with a flat 10 percent tariff, issued under a legal authority known as Section 122.
The Section 122 tariff will expire in July unless Congress votes to reauthorize it. So the Trump administration has been working on tariffs to replace it. It has started two trade investigations under another legal provision known as Section 301, which allows the president to impose tariffs in response to unfair trade practices.
One of the new investigations would target countries that don’t have laws blocking imports made with forced labor. The other centers on what the administration calls “excess capacity” among 16 of the country’s largest trading partners.
The Trump administration says overproduction in the factory sectors of some foreign countries has resulted in large and persistent U.S. trade deficits with those nations. Representatives from various industries, ranging from sugar to technology to chemicals, are set to testify about the investigation on Tuesday and Wednesday in Washington this week.
Next week, Mr. Trump is expected to visit Beijing, for a meeting with the Chinese leader that will be partly focused on trade. U.S. imports from China have shrunk significantly, as the administration has imposed high tariffs on Chinese goods, and companies have relocated supply chains out of the country.
How bad are sales of Tesla’s Cybertruck? Nearly 20% of the vehicles went to Elon Musk’s other companies, raising questions about the vehicle’s future
The Cybertruck, Tesla’s would-be competitor in the EV pickup truck market, has long since secured its place as the Edsel of the electric vehicle age.
It’s been derided as unwieldy and ugly and unable to match other pickups in basic functionality. In the colorful take of Tesla critic Will Lockett, it’s “the vehicular form of halitosis” and an “ick’ on four wheels.”
But one doesn’t need words to describe how the Cybertruck has fared among the pickup-buying public; the numbers tell the story.
According to Cox Automotive’s Kelley Blue Book, Tesla sold only 20,237 of the vehicles in 2025, down 48.1% from the 38,965 sold the year before. The slide continued in the first quarter of this year, Cox reported — 3,519 sold, down 45.1% from the 6,406 sold in the year-earlier period.
But there’s more to the story — or to be more precise, less.
In the fourth quarter of 2025, of the 7,071 Cybertruck U.S. registrations, 1,279 went to SpaceX, the rocketship company headed by Tesla boss Elon Musk, which is planning an initial public stock offering sometime this year. An additional 60 were registered by other companies in the Musk empire, namely xAI, Neuralink and the Boring Co.
In other words, nearly 20% of all the Cybertrucks registered in the U.S. in the fourth quarter went to Musk’s companies. Based on the Cybertruck’s starting price of $70,000, that’s the equivalent of $93.7 million in merchandise circulating within Musk’s orbit rather than going to outside buyers.
In the fourth quarter of 2025, of the 7,071 Cybertruck U.S. registrations, 1,279 went to SpaceX
The figures were compiled by S&P Global Mobility and reported by Bloomberg. I asked Tesla to comment but received no reply.
The transfers of Cybertrucks to other Musk companies raise questions about how he conflates the interests of his private companies and his public company (Tesla), arguably to the disadvantage of Tesla shareholders. More on that in a moment.
The sales numbers raise obvious questions about the future of the Cybertruck as part of Tesla’s five-model lineup. They also undermine Musk’s declared faith in the truck. When it was introduced in 2023, Musk asserted that he expected to sell 250,000 to 500,000 Cybertrucks a year once manufacturing capacity was fully engaged.
It would be hard to find market experts who took that prediction seriously, but few probably expected the shortfall to be so steep. Cybertruck’s 48.1% decline in 2025 sales compared with 2024 was the sharpest such decline of any EV in the U.S. market over that period, in which EV sales generally slumped.
Initial Cybertruck sales of 38,965 in 2024 seemed almost to validate Musk’s optimism. But negative perceptions took hold through the year and into 2025, starting with the ridicule the vehicle’s boxy design attracted on the street.
Poor manufacturing quality has prompted U.S. regulators to order eight recalls of Cybertrucks since its introduction, culminating in the March 2025 recall of almost every Cybertruck to correct the tendency of a stainless steel exterior panel to come off the vehicle at freeway speeds, posing a hazard to other drivers.
Online reports and videos showing Cybertrucks defeated by conditions such as uneven terrain and steep grades that are routinely managed by rival pickups may also have sapped buyer enthusiasm for the model.
It’s true that the Cybertruck has problems that aren’t shared with other EVs. One is that it can’t be sold in European Union countries, because the EU has found that its exterior design can imperil pedestrians.
Nor do other EV manufacturers have to contend with public obloquy being showered on their leaders; Tesla sales in Germany cratered last year after Musk threw his support behind the extreme-right neo-Nazi party Alternative for Germany. There, new Tesla vehicle registrations fell by 76.3% in February 2025 from the same month a year earlier — that is, to 1,429 from 6,029. The decline continued all year, resulting in an overall decline of 48.4%.
As my colleague Caroline Petrow-Cohen reported last year, public distemper over Musk’s position as the leader of DOGE, the quasi-governmental body that ran roughshod through the federal workforce after Donald Trump launched his second term, also may have cut into Tesla sales in the U.S. A study by Yale researchers last year estimated that Musk cost Tesla as many as 1.26 million car sales since October 2022, when he acquired the social media platform Twitter and gave greater access on it to the far right and other extremist voices.
That said, Teslas remained the best-selling EVs in the U.S. market last year with nearly 60% of EV unit sales, according to Cox. Its full-year decline of 7% was exceeded by several other carmakers with EVs in their lineups, including BMW (down 16.7%), Kia (down 39.7%) and Ford (down 14.1%).
The U.S. EV market generally lost ground after the expiration of federal incentives last year, but many individual models slumped sharply, including Ford’s all-electric version of its top-selling F-150 pickup, sales of which fell 18.5% from the year before (though it still outsold the Cybertruck).
Tesla’s transfers of Cybertrucks to other Musk operations should concern Tesla shareholders, depending on how much, if anything, SpaceX and the other companies paid for the vehicles. In arm’s-length transactions between related parties, the transfers should be marked at prices resembling those on the open market, whether individual or fleet sales.
Tesla has been vague to the point of opacity about these deals. In an amendment to its annual report filed on April 30 (after the Bloomberg report), it disclosed that it received about $143.3 million last year and $100,000 this year in deals with SpaceX, including “the sale of vehicles” at what may be market prices. But it didn’t say those deals involved the Cybertruck.
It would be interesting to know how SpaceX is using its Cybertrucks, since it wouldn’t seem to need a fleet to transport equipment headed for space in the back of pickup trucks. Why Musk’s AI or neurological companies need any such vehicles is hard to gauge.
As it happens, however, Tesla investors don’t seem to have been fazed by Bloomberg’s report. Tesla shares closed in Monday’s trading at $392.51, higher than they were on April 15, the day before Bloomberg published, when they closed at $391.95.
This wouldn’t be the first time that Musk has melded his personal interests with those of his public shareholders. The prototypical such action occurred in 2016, when he orchestrated Tesla’s purchase of his SolarCity for $2.8 billion, a 35% premium from the latter’s trading price. (Investment manager Jim Chanos, who had short positions in both companies, called the deal a “shameful example of corporate governance at its worst.”)
At the time, Tesla’s seven board seats were held by Musk and four of his cronies, including his brother Kimbal, and SolarCity’s board included Musk and two of his cousins. On that occasion, Tesla investors turned queasy, pushing Tesla shares down by more than 10% the day the deal was announced.
Musk defended the deal as a triumph of clean energy industry synergy, but one struggles to find significant gains from the linkup. Energy generation and storage, which would cover SolarCity’s business, accounted for about 13.5% of Tesla’s revenue in 2025, nearly a decade after the merger.
What role the Cybertruck — indeed, any Tesla vehicles — will play in the company’s future remains murky. Musk recently has talked about shifting the company’s focus to AI, robotaxis and humanoid robots, but these all resemble pipe dreams. AI is more and more a marketing term with less meat on its bones than the incessant publicity about it suggests and Tesla’s robotaxi venture today consists of about a dozen vehicles tooling around Austin, Texas, with human supervisors in the car or near at hand.
Musk last year projected that humanoid robots would generate “$30 trillion in revenue” for Tesla, though he acknowledged that he was “just guessing” and that there would be a “long way to go between here and making one billion robots a year.” As I’ve reported, however, even some robotics experts argue that giving workaday robots humanoid features makes no sense functionally and is likely to be abandoned once manufacturers seriously contemplate how household robots should look and function.
None of this means that Tesla might not be able to recapture its mojo in the EV market. Consumer interest in EVs tends to rise and fall in lockstep with gas prices. EV makers had a tough 2025 in the U.S. But that could turn around this year if President Trump’s Iran adventure continues to drive up the cost of oil and consequently gasoline prices at the pump.
But Tesla faces a lot more competition for EVs than it ever has in the past; other companies such as Hyundai have moved down-market and China’s BYD recently surpassed Tesla in global sales of battery-powered vehicles. BYD has been largely kept out of the U.S. market by high tariffs, but it may be impossible to keep its cars out forever. Tesla, which pioneered the EV market, may need a new model to compete with BYD and the foreign and domestic automakers already in the market, but the Cybertruck sure hasn’t been looking like its savior.
Anthropic is teaming up with several large investment firms to create a venture that will help companies integrate artificial intelligence tools into their systems, the latest example of the deepening ties between Wall Street and the A.I. industry.
The private equity firms Blackstone and Hellman & Friedman and the investment bank Goldman Sachs through its investment funds are among the financial backers in the new firm, which will work with companies to deploy Anthropic’s A.I. model Claude.
In announcing the creation of the firm on Monday, Anthropic and the investment firms said the technology around A.I. was changing so rapidly that many companies were finding it challenging to integrate Claude.
The backers of the new firm said it would work with Anthropic’s engineers to help companies deploy Claude, which has abilities that “change on a monthly or even weekly basis.”
The creation of a firm combining Wall Street and Anthropic comes as the A.I. industry is locked in a fierce competition to become the go-to A.I. model in the private and public sector. It is also happening as A.I. companies, including Anthropic and its rival OpenAI, are expected to soon go public in what could be the largest series of public stock offerings ever, creating a boon for Wall Street.
The decision by Blackstone, Goldman and the other investment firms to partner with Anthropic is a notable endorsement of an A.I. company that the Trump administration has criticized for refusing to allow the Pentagon to deploy its models without meeting the company’s ethical limits.
Anthropic and the Pentagon are in federal litigation over the Defense Department’s decision to label the company a supply chain risk, an unusual use of the government’s power to raise concerns about how corporations build their products.
Many of the details of Anthropic’s venture with Wall Street have not yet been announced, including its name and chief executive. But one area that the venture said it would start working on is integrating Claude at portfolio companies of the private equity firms that backed this deal, including Blackstone and Hellman & Friedman.
Anthropic, Blackstone and Hellman & Friedman said they would each put $300 million into the new company, and Goldman Sachs would contribute roughly $150 million, according to two people familiar with the deal terms. General Atlantic, Leonard Green, Apollo Global Management, GIC and Sequoia Capital are among the other firms that are taking part and investing in the venture.
Wall Street banks have been among A.I.’s enthusiastic corporate users. During the first quarter earnings reports from the largest banks, some executives discussed with unusual candor how A.I. had automated certain jobs, which in turn led to job cuts and higher profits.
Elon Musk recently demanded that banks, law firms, auditors and other advisers working on the I.P.O. of his company, SpaceX, to buy subscriptions to his A.I. chatbot, Grok.
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